WITH, BEFORE, AFTER
by
Alexander Maclaren
'Enoch walked with God,'--GENESIS v. 22.
'Walk before Me.'--GENESIS xvii. 1.
'Ye shall walk after the Lord your God.'--DEUTERONOMY xiii. 4.
You will have anticipated, I suppose, my purpose in doing what I
very seldom do--cutting little snippets out of different verses and
putting them together. You see that these three fragments, in their
resemblances and in their differences, are equally significant and
instructive. They concur in regarding life as a walk--a metaphor
which expresses continuity, so that every man's life is a whole,
which expresses progress, which expresses change, and which implies a goal.
They agree in saying that God must he brought into a life somehow, and in
some aspect, if that life is to be anything else but an aimless wandering,
if it is to tend to the point to which every
human life should attain. But then they diverge, and, if we put them
together, they say to us that there are three different ways in which we
ought to bring God into our life. We should 'walk _with_ Him,' like Enoch;
we should 'walk _before_' Him, as Abraham was bade to do; and we should
'walk _after_' Him, as the command to do was given to all Israel. And these
three prepositions, _with_, _before_, _after_, attached to the general idea
of life as a walk, give us a triple aspect--which yet is, of course,
fundamentally, one--of the way in which life may be ennobled, dignified,
calmed, hallowed, focussed, and concentrated by the various relations into
which we enter with Him. So I take the three of them.
1. 'Enoch walked _with_ God.'
That is a sweet, simple, easily intelligible, and yet lofty way of putting
the notion which we bring into a more abstract and less impressive shape
when we talk about communion with God. Two men travelling along a road keep
each other company. 'How can two walk together except they be agreed?' The
companion is at our side all the same, though the mists may have come down
and we cannot see Him. We can hear His voice, we can grasp His hand, we can
catch the echoes of His steps. We know He is there, and that is enough.
Enoch and God walked together, by the simple exercise of the faith that
fills the Invisible with one great, loving Face. By a continuous, definite
effort, as we are going through the bustle of daily life, and amid all the
pettiness and perplexities and monotonies that make up our often weary and
always heavy days, we can realise to ourselves that He is of a truth at our
sides, and by purity of life and heart we can bring Him nearer, and can make
ourselves more conscious of His nearness. For, brethren, the one thing that
parts a man from God, and makes it impossible for a heart to expatiate in
the thought of His presence, is the contrariety to His will in our conduct.
The slightest invisible film of mist that comes across the blue abyss of the
mighty sky will blot out the brightest of the stars, and we may sometimes
not be able to see the mist, and only know that it is there because we do
not see the planet. So unconscious sin may steal in between us and God, and
we shall no longer be able to say, 'I walk with Him.'
The Roman Catholics talk, in their mechanical way, of bringing down
all the spiritual into the material and formal, about the 'practice of the
presence of God.' It is an ugly phrase, but it means a great thing, that
Christian people ought, very much more than they do, to aim, day by day, and
amidst their daily duties, at realising that most elementary thought which,
like a great many other elementary thoughts, is impotent because we believe
it so utterly, that wherever we are, we may have Him with us. It is the
secret of blessedness, of tranquillity, of power, of everything good and
noble.
'I am a stranger with Thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were,' said
the Psalmist of old. If he had left out these two little words, 'with Thee,'
he would have been uttering a tragic complaint; but when they come in, all
that is painful, all that is solitary, all that is transient, bitterly
transient, in the long succession of the generations that have passed across
earth's scene, and have not been kindred to it, is cleared away and changed
into gladness. Never mind, though you are a stranger, if you have that
companion. Never mind, though you are only a sojourner; if you have Him with
you, whatever passes He will not pass; and though we dwell here in a system
to which we do not belong, and its transiency and our transiency bring with
them many sorrows, when we can say, 'Lord! Thou hast been our dwelling-place
in all generations,' we are at home, and that eternal home will never pass.
Enoch 'walked with God,' and, of course, 'God took him,' There was nothing
else for it, and there could be no other end, for a life of
communion with God here has in it the prophecy and the pledge of a
life of eternal union hereafter. So, then, 'practise the presence of God.'
An old mystic says: 'If I can tell how many times to-day I have thought
about God, I have not thought about Him often enough.' Walk with Him by
faith, by effort, by purity.
2. And now take the other aspect suggested by the other word God
spoke to Abraham: 'I am the Almighty God, walk _before_ Me and
be thou perfect.'
That suggests, as I suppose I do not need to point out, the idea not
only of communion, which the former phrase brought to our minds, but that of
the inspection of our conduct. 'As ever in the great Taskmaster's eye,' says
the stern Puritan poet, and although one may
object to that word 'Taskmaster,' yet the idea conveyed is the correct
expansion of the commandment given to Abraham. Observe how 'walk before Me'
is dovetailed, as it were, between the revelation 'I am the Almighty God'
and the injunction 'Be thou perfect.' The realisation of that presence of
the Almighty which is implied in the expression 'Walk before Me,' the
assurance that we are in His sight, will lead straight to the fulfilment of
the injunction that bears upon the moral conduct. The same connection of
thought underlies Peter's injunction, 'Like as He ... is holy, so be ye holy
in all
manner of conversation,' followed immediately as it is by, 'If ye call on
Him as Father, who without respect of persons judgeth'--as a present
estimate--'according to every mail's work, pass the time of
your sojourning here in fear'--that reverential awe which will lead
you to be 'holy even as I am holy.'
This thought that we are in that divine presence, and that there is
silently, but most really, a divine opinion being formed of us,
consolidated, as it were, moment by moment through our lives, is
only tolerable if we have been walking with God. If we are sure, by
the power of our communion with Him, of His loving heart as well as
of His righteous judgment, then we can spread ourselves out before
Him, as a woman will lay out her webs of cloth on the green grass
for the sun to blaze down upon them, and bleach the ingrained filth
out of them. We must first walk 'with God' before the consciousness
that we are walking 'before' Him becomes one that we can entertain
and not go mad. When we are sure of the 'with' we can bear the
'before.'
Did you ever see how on a review day, as each successive battalion
and company nears the saluting-point where the General inspecting
sits, they straighten themselves up and dress their ranks, and pull
themselves together as they pass beneath his critical eye. A master's eye
makes diligent servants. If we, in the strength of God, would only realise,
day by day and act by act of our lives, that we are before Him, what a
revolution could be effected on our characters and what a transformation on
all our conduct!
'Walk before Me' and you will be perfect. For the Hebrew words on
which I am now commenting may be read, in accordance with the usage of the
language, as being not only a commandment but a promise, or, rather, not as
two commandments, but a commandment with an appended promise, and so as
equivalent to 'If you will walk before Me you will be perfect.' And if we
realise that we are under 'the pure eyes and perfect judgment of' God, we
shall thereby be strongly urged and mightily helped to be perfect as He is
perfect.
3. Lastly, take the other relation, which is suggested by the third
of my texts, where Israel as a whole is commanded to 'walk _after_ the Lord'
their God.
In harmony with the very frequent expression of the Old Testament
about 'going after idols' so Israel here is to 'go after God.' What does
that mean? Communion, the consciousness of being judged by God,
will lead on to aspiration and loving, longing effort to get nearer and
nearer to Him. 'My soul followeth hard after Thee,' said the Psalmist, 'Thy
right hand upholdeth me.' That element of yearning aspiration, of eager
desire to be closer and closer, and liker and liker, to God must be in all
true religion. And unless we have it in some measure, it is useless to talk
about being Christian people. To press onwards, not as though we had already
attained, but following after, if that we may apprehend that for which also
we are apprehended, is the attitude of every true follower of Christ. The
very crown of the excellence of the Christian life is that it never can
reach its goal, and therefore an immortal youth of aspiration and growth is
guaranteed to it. Christian people, are you following after God? Are you any
nearer to Him than you were ten years ago? 'Walk with Me, walk before Me,
walk after Me.'
I need not do more than remind you of another meaning involved in
this same expression. If I walk after God, then I let Him go before
me and show me my road. Do you remember how, when the ark was to cross
Jordan, the commandment was given to the Israelites to let it go well on in
front, so that there should be no mistake about the
course, 'for ye have not passed this way heretofore.' Do not be in
too great a hurry to press upon the heels of God, if I may so say.
Do not let your decisions outrun His providence. Keep back the impatience
that would hurry on, and wait for His ripening purposes
to ripen and His counsels to develop themselves. Walk after God, and be sure
you do not go in front of your Guide, or you will lose both your way and
your Guide.
I need not say more than a word about the highest aspect which this
third of our commandments takes, 'His sheep follow Him'--'leaving us an
example that we should follow in His steps,' that is the culmination of the
walking 'with,' and 'before,' and 'after' God which these Old Testament
saints were partially practising. All is gathered into the one great word,
'He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk even as He
walked.'
Maclaren's Exposition on Genesis
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