Hebrews 1:1 - 3; 8:1 - 2; Ephesians 2:4 - 6; Acts 2:1 - 2; 2 Samuel 7:18 - 24

I desire to say a word on greatness, because God would have us become accustomed to greatness. Our own destiny is great, for we shall move and serve ultimately in the presence of greatness in the fullest sense of the word. These passages bring greatness before us; the greatness of Christ, the greatness of God, and also the greatness of the saints as God's workmanship.

Hebrews 1 and Hebrews 8 refer to the greatness of Christ in a striking way, particularly the former. It is essentially the chapter of greatness as regards Christ. It brings Him before us as the One in whom God has spoken, and is speaking, because the speaking goes on. God has spoken "in Son", and the speaking is now from the place where Jesus is. It is not simply an historical matter; the Scripture brings before us the place from which the present speaking comes. As it says, "having made by Himself the purification of sins, He set Himself down on the right hand of the Greatness on high". In this chapter the Scriptures, particularly the Psalms, are quoted extensively to bring out the greatness of Christ. The chapter brings out who He is in His Person. As it says lower down, "Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of Thine hands. They shall perish; but Thou remainest; and they shall all wax old as doth a garment; and as a vesture shalt Thou fold them up, and they shall be changed; but Thou art the Same". That is a title of Deity -- "Thou art The Same", although applied to the Lord in manhood. "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and for ever", Hebrews 13:8. In His Person the Lord Jesus has never changed. He is the same whatever the circumstances into which He has come. He Himself is unchangeable in His unspeakable greatness, whether on earth, or going into death, or risen and ascended. His conditions have changed, but He in His Person has never changed. Though, truly, in His perfect manhood here He learned obedience in the things that He suffered (Hebrews 5), yet that does not affect the truth that in His Person He is unchanging and unchangeable. It is a great thing to get that into the soul. And yet He is truly Man. He has come into manhood in order that the whole mind and will of God as to man might be expressed, including God's disposition towards man, and the speaking involves these things.

The Son is said to be "the effulgence of His glory and the expression of His substance"; thus the One in whom God speaks is entirely in accord with the speaking. He could say when here, "I am altogether that which I say unto you". The expression, "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all", implies that God is always what He purports to be; His word is a true expression of Himself. And so this blessed Person, in whom God has spoken, is the full expression and out-shining of God; and, at the same time, the expression of His pleasure in man. He is the Man who can fill out everything for God. What a delight to God to have such a One, the One who is going to take up all things as the true Heir. But redemption was a necessity, and so it says, "having made by Himself the purification of sins, He set Himself down on the right hand of the Greatness on high".

I would like to commend that expression to you, because the Lord Himself is ineffably great, and yet as Man He has set Himself down at the right hand of the Greatness. That word "the Greatness" is the supreme expression of greatness in Scripture. The right hand is the most important seat. How great Christ must be, to be able, without presumption, to set Himself down at the right hand of the Greatness on high. We cannot measure what is involved in that expression "the Greatness". It involves, no doubt, essential Deity, but how it magnifies the Lord Jesus that as Man He has gone in and set Himself down at the right hand of the Greatness on high. That is the blessed place He has taken as Man and it is from that point that the speaking comes at the present time. It comes from the very presence of the Greatness on high.

Before I pass on I would just say this: love enters into the whole matter. "Taking a place by so much better than the angels". No angel could ever have that place, no angel could set himself down there. That was reserved for man, but only one Man. He is more than man, of course -- He is the Same. He Himself has part in Deity, and yet this is intended to magnify to us the great fact that a Man has sat down there. Only One who Himself had part in "the Greatness" could do it, but how wonderful it is that a divine Person has taken manhood, and as Man has taken a place that an angel could never take! But that Man is the Son. "To which of the angels said He ever, Thou art my Son". We must not think that the thought of greatness shuts out affection. Love marks the whole position. "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee, and again, I will be to Him a Father, and He shall be to me a Son". That is how God regards this One who has set Himself down at the right hand of the Greatness. He is the object of the Father's love.

But now in chapter 8 it is Christ on our side. In chapter 1 we see Christ on God's side, the One through whom God speaks, and in that respect He must be alone in all His greatness, but in chapter 8 the apostle says, "Now a summary of the things of which we are speaking is, We have such a One high priest, who has sat down on the right hand of the throne of the Greatness in the heavens". It is what we have. In chapter 1 it is what God has -- His Son, through whom He can speak. Chapter 8 is what we have. "We have such a One high priest, who has set Himself down (see J.N.D.'s note) at the right hand of the throne of the Greatness in the heavens; minister of the holy places and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord has pitched, and not man". He is there as our High Priest, our Representative. He is there as the true Aaron. We are in the position of Aaron's sons who were with him in the service. But how great it is that the Lord Jesus as the High Priest has sat Himself down as our Representative; He has set Himself down at the right hand of the throne of the Greatness in the heavens. What a wonderful contemplation! The Man, speaking reverently, who is our Representative, has, without any presumption, sat Himself down in the seat of greatest honour and power, at the right hand of the throne of the Greatness in the heavens.

We are a part of the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched and not man; we are in immediate proximity to the throne. We must not be geographical in our thoughts. The true tabernacle has its application to the assembly here on earth and as belonging to the assembly we belong to the most holy place; not that they could go in in the fullest sense -- the way into the holy of holies was not then made manifest (Hebrews 9:8). But now it is fully manifested, for the very Person in whom God has made known Himself and His mind and thoughts is the One who has gone in as High Priest and who is over the whole service, and who links His brethren with Him in the service, in the presence of God Himself. As I said, I believe God would help us to become more accustomed to being in the presence of greatness -- the greatness of Christ, and then -- what is even more wonderful -- the Greatness; that which is beyond us to comprehend, and yet as in the presence of God we have a sense of it. We know God as revealed and yet we are in the presence of One who, though known as revealed, is in His own Being beyond our comprehension. We know Him revealed as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. His Father and our Father, His God and our God, yet there is always that which is beyond us, but it is the very sense of that, the Greatness, that gives the highest note to our worship. We are in the presence of "the King of the ages". Paul say, "to Him be honour and glory to the ages of ages".

We are before Him as sons. The more we enter into the relationship of sons the more we shall cherish the thought of great-ness, the greatness of the One we know as Father, His ineffable greatness as God.

But then there is the question of the greatness of the saints. In thinking of the greatness of the saints we need to be very careful always to maintain that Christ's greatness is outstanding. In a way there is no comparison. I love to make that clear for the joy of my own heart. Think of the ark, and then think of one of those boards. Yet the board was made of the same material as the ark, and the boards put together made a fit setting for the ark, they made the shrine where the ark was. In that sense the saints are great, although Christ's greatness is unique. Even the church complete cannot compare with Christ in the greatness of His Person, although as regards His Manhood she is His fullness. The saints are great because they form an adequate setting for Him. We sing, "Of Thy body, Lord, are we". We are a necessity to Christ, not only for His heart's affections but for the display of His glory and to be a fit setting for Him. We are a necessity to God, too, for His habitation, because it is where Christ is enshrined, and all is in keeping with Him, that God can dwell complacently. It is a great thing to see that the assembly is a necessity to Christ and to God. God will never dwell with angels in that sense. God dwells with men. Man is the order of being that alone can satisfy the affections of the heart of God and provide Him with a habitation according to His own thoughts. His eternal purpose is in regard to man -- Christ, indeed, supremely, and yet -- I speak reverently -- the saints are a necessity to Christ in connection with the setting in which He is to be seen eternally, and the saints similarly are a necessity to God. Divine Persons are always self-sufficient, of course, but divine love and glory require the saints. It makes the assembly great in our minds, it makes the saints great, and yet Christ is ever outstanding. Yet in whatever setting we see Christ, in their measure the saints correspond with it. If we see Christ as the ark, the saints are the boards, of the same material; if we see Christ as the veil, the saints are the curtains, the same material. We think of Aaron -- we are the sons, clothed with garments for glory and ornament, though not so resplendent as Aaron's, associated with him in the service of God. "He that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of one". It is a wonderful thing to see that the saints correspond with Christ. In whatever setting Christ is seen, the saints, in their measure, correspond with it. "As He is, so are we in this world". And so when you come to the thought of sitting in heavenly places, Ephesians shows that the saints are brought into correspondence with Christ in their measure. "God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us with the Christ ... and has raised us up together" -- that refers to elevation -- "and has made us sit down together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus". The Lord Jesus sat Himself down at the right hand. I love to think of Jesus going thus into the presence of the Greatness. The Lord Jesus could go in and take the highest seat without presumption. He sat Himself down -- it was His right place. We could not set ourselves down, but it says that God has made us sit down. If we found ourselves in the presence of earthly greatness, in the palace of the king, we should stand, and if the king made us sit down how honoured we should feel! But that is what God does with the saints, it is what divine love does. It is "because of His great love". Love enters into this whole matter. We must not separate love and greatness. Because God loved us, He wanted us in the most exalted place, and He has made us sit down there. Love would not have been satisfied otherwise. We could not have set ourselves down there. But God has raised us up together and made us sit down together. A most touching thing! It would not satisfy Him if we were not perfectly at home there. There is no sense of discrepancy. God makes us sit down. We are brought into correspondence with Christ. And unless it were so we could not provide a fit setting for Christ. We are the very shrine where God is, where Christ is. How could we have been the shrine, the temple of God, if we were not able to sit down? The Lord Jesus has set Himself down and God makes us sit down in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus, and it is in this sense of restfulness that the service proceeds. In the Old Testament no priest ever sat down, and when the glory filled the house they could not even stand to minister. In Christianity our High Priest, the Minister of the sanctuary, has sat Himself down at the right hand of the throne of the Greatness in the heavens, and God has raised us up and made us sit down together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus, to provide a setting for that blessed Person.

Acts 2 refers to the public position down here corresponding with our place above. The saints were together with one accord in one place, and Christ was enshrined in their hearts. Some of them had seen Him go up, His hands uplifted in blessing. It was a company gathered in the light of Christ having gone up. And then it says, "There came a sound from heaven as of a mighty rushing wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting". It was the glory coming in. Just as when the tabernacle was set up of old, the glory came in and filled it, so now. Who was coming in? A Divine Person, the Holy Spirit. One feels how little we apprehend that we are in the presence of the Holy Spirit, that He is with us and in us; that a Christian in that sense is always in the immediate presence of God. Here it says, "It filled all the house where they were sitting". The glory came in. Of old when the glory came in the priest could not even stand to minister, but it does not say that these Christians stood. They were perfectly at home in the presence of a Divine Person, they were sitting. Their actual position on earth, where they could be seen by men, corresponded with Christ's position above. He was in the presence of the Greatness on high; they were in the presence of the Holy Spirit. He was sitting, and they were sitting. I only mention these things to show the greatness of the saints. As I say, not to belittle the outstanding greatness of Christ, but to show the greatness of the place that God has given to the saints -- how great is His workmanship. It is no credit to us. It is because we are God's workmanship, and all in view of providing an adequate setting for Christ.

I read the passage in Samuel as an encouragement to us to be like David and to go in and sit before the Lord. One feels for oneself that one has hardly done this at all, and yet it is open to us. I know we do it to some extent collectively and there are wonderful manifestations. We hear His voice and we respond. But one would desire to encourage one's own heart and the brethren to come into this personally. David went in and sat before the Lord. It is the attitude of sitting. He was beyond his dispensation. It is really the Christian position, to go in and sit before the Lord. We should be concerned that the atmosphere of the holiest should mark all our meetings, but it is a wonderful thing that it is open to the individual too. As we sit there we become impressed with a sense of greatness, we are in the presence of greatness, so David says here (verse 21), "For Thy word's sake, and according to Thine own heart, hast Thou done all these great things, to make Thy servant know them. Wherefore Thou art great, O Lord God: for there is none like Thee, neither is there any God beside Thee, according to all that we have heard with our ears". He had taken in divine speaking. There was all this greatness that God had made known. He says, "Wherefore Thou art great and there is none like Thee", and then he goes on to speak of the greatness of God's people, "and what one nation in the earth is like Thy people, even like Israel, whom God went to redeem for a people to Himself, and to make Him a name, and to do for you great things", so that in this interview that David had with God as sitting before Him, he made way in his soul for impressions of greatness. May we spend more time in the presence of Divine Persons! We find time for other things, why not find more time for this? To be in the presence of the ark, as it were, as David was here, and in the presence of the God who dwells between the cherubim, and to let impressions of greatness come into our souls, impressions of the greatness of God -- "there is none like Thee" -- the greatness of Christ and all that He has done, and the greatness of the saints as God's workmanship. May God help us in it, for His name's sake.

Weston-super-Mare, July 7, 1945 (from Words of Grace and Comfort, 1947, 23:105 - 14)

FULL GROWTH

Colossians 1:24 - 26; Ephesians 4:7 - 16; Hebrews 5:8 - 14; Hebrews 6:1,13

I have in mind to say a word as to going on to completion, perfection. The idea is perfection, or full growth. God has no pleasure in what is imperfect or unfinished; God has pleasure in things that are complete, and so it says at the outset that God finished the work and that He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made; that is the idea of the sabbath. It means that the toil is ended because the work is finished. So the Lord said on the cross, "It is finished". How wonderful it is that Divine Persons always complete what They begin! God at the beginning completed what He began to do in creation. The Lord Jesus says, "I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do"; and finally in Revelation the One that sat upon the throne says, "It is done".

We are living in the days of completion. God is completing the assembly; He is bringing the greatest of all dispensations and the longest of all dispensations to a close by completing His work. Nothing is to be left unfinished. This applies even to what is down here provisionally in testimony, for God would secure in a remnant a full answer to His thoughts as to the assembly. That is what God has in mind. So the Lord is able to address the remnant as if it were the assembly: "I also will keep thee out of the hour of trial", and "I will cause that they ... shall know that I have loved thee", Revelation 3:9. As features are found in the remnant proper to the assembly as a whole, the Lord can address it as though it were the assembly. In fact He really addresses the assembly as a whole in the light of what He finds in the remnant, because He will keep the whole assembly out of the hour of trial.

The first thing to notice in the Scriptures read is that God has completed the unfolding of His mind. That is what Paul means when he says, "the dispensation of God which is given me towards you to complete the word of God", Colossians 1:25. It is a great thing for us to lay hold of that. How small and trivial to allow ourselves to be hindered by occupation with the wrong man when this is available! We want to be liberated from all else so that we can go in for the vast realm of things which has been unfolded. We are privileged to live in the day when the unfolding of God's mind is complete. In the second Scripture we see the wonderful provision that God has made that we may lay hold of His mind and thus be perfected, growing fully to our allotted measure. The gifts are given for the work of the ministry "until we all arrive at the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, at the full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fullness of the Christ". On the one hand the mind of God has been told out and on the other full provision has been made for us to arrive at it and come to full growth. Then the word to the Hebrews is the practical side and is intended to arouse exercise with us to move forward and to avoid sluggishness.

It is a great thing to recognize that the word of God has been completed by Paul. It is said of the lame man in Acts 3 that he held Peter and John. We should do that, and their ministries will lead us to Paul. We need Peter and John. I am not setting them aside. Peter leads us up to Paul, and John, though having his own distinctive ministry, brings us back to Paul and holds us to Paul. Nevertheless it was given to Paul to complete the word of God, and that shows the importance of Paul's ministry. Another thing to notice is that he connects the completion of the word of God with the ministry of the assembly. In this passage he refers to both of his ministries. In verse 23 he refers to himself as a minister of the gospel, and in verse 24 he speaks of Christ's body which is the assembly, "of which I became minister ... to complete the word of God". Paul was a minister of the gospel and a minister of the assembly, and the completion of the word of God is particularly linked with the ministry of the assembly. I believe it is most important to understand that Paul's ministry of the assembly is that which completes the unfolding of the mind of God. God has reached in the assembly what He ever had in mind. He may have committed certain things to Israel, such as sonship, the service of God, etc., but they belong primarily to the assembly. The assembly was in His mind before the world began. At best Israel had only the figure of things to come, for the tabernacle and the temple were figures, but the assembly is the thing itself. Christendom has imitated the figure and returned to the "weak and beggarly elements"; but the fact is that what was once here in figure is now here in actuality. We are it, we are part of it, we belong to this vessel. It is a magnificent thing to lay hold of this! So it says in verse 25, "according to the dispensation of God which is given me towards you". It is for us to lay hold of it. We live in the most wonderful day, when the vessel itself is here. The true temple, the tabernacle of God, the city of God in principle, is here in the assembly. It is all here because the saints form Christ's body. If you have the body of Christ you have everything. He speaks of His own body as the temple, John 2:21. Now the saints are "the body of Christ" and "temple of God". Everything which was in the mind of God was first expressed in the Lord Jesus personally but is now continued in the assembly. It is a wonderful thing to lay hold of this; thus it is not exactly the gospel which completes the mind of God, because the gospel was not hidden from ages and generations, but the truth of the assembly was hidden. As Paul says, "the mystery hidden from ages and from generations, but has now been made manifest to His saints".

It is a great thing to have Paul's ministry for it unlocks the word of God. Completing the word of God does not mean that Paul's ministry finished the Scriptures, because John wrote after Paul, but it means that Paul's ministry completes the unfolding of God's mind in filling out all that had gone before -- it "fills full" the word of God. If we had not Paul's ministry we could not understand what has gone before, but now we can understand the types. We can understand the types of Adam and Eve, Isaac and Rebecca, the tabernacle, the house that Solomon built, and many other things, because we have Paul's ministry of the assembly. The mystery was hid in God but now the truth is out. The whole mind of God is out, and it is a tremendous matter. Think of what it means. God is God, yet He has been pleased in this dispensation to make known through Paul all His mind as to Christ and the assembly. He has held nothing back. I should like the young people to take this in, for it is well worth going in for all our lives. You may go to the university and learn what men are thinking, but these are God's thoughts, and it is worth while, young men and young women, giving yourselves up to these things for the whole of your lives. Nothing else is worth while in comparison. That is why Paul says to Timothy, "Occupy thyself with these things; be wholly in them", the whole mind of God. You may say, 'I am studying this or that'; but what about the mind of God? I admit you cannot get it on the line of mere human study, yet it is available to us: "which is given me towards you to complete the word of God, the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but has now been made manifest to His saints; to whom God would make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the nations ..". Let us pay attention to Paul's ministry. He brings in the full thoughts of God as to blessing, as to sonship, as to our heavenly relations, and also as to the vessel in which we all have part.

Now it is not only that the whole mind of God is expressed, but Ephesians shows that divine provision has been made to bring us into it. It is a great thing to see that. It says, "Having ascended up on high, He ... has given gifts to men". It speaks of Christ having ascended up above all the heavens that He might fill all things; from that altitude the gifts are given and therefore they are irresistible. They come from the victorious ascended Man, who has overthrown every hostile power. He has given some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some shepherds and teachers. You may say we have not apostles now, but we have their writings. We also have the New Testament prophets as well as the prophetic word as known in our day; and we have some evangelists, and shepherds and teachers, all "for the perfecting of the saints, with a view to the work of the ministry, with a view to the edifying of the body of Christ". God has made every provision for the perfecting of the saints in order that we should not be unfinished but every one of us perfected. From the standpoint of the work of Christ we are already perfected: "For by one offering He has perfected in perpetuity the sanctified", Hebrews 10:14. All who believe in the Lord Jesus are in a place of acceptance before God, which cannot be improved upon by any amount of growth on our side. Sanctification relates to the holiness of God; and through faith in the Person and work of Christ we are fitted to enter the holiest, the immediate presence of God -- that is our home. But the measure of enjoyment depends upon the measure of growth. We shall not enjoy it if we become sluggish. There is the side of growth and these gifts are given "for the perfecting of the saints, with a view to the work of the ministry, with a view to the edifying of the body of Christ". We are each to be perfected with a view to fitting into our place in the vessel, so that there is also the edifying, or building up, of the body of Christ, "until we all arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, at the full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fullness of the Christ".

Now here, dear brethren, there is a vast range for us to come into, a measureless range, something to arrive at -- "the unity of the faith". The unity of the Spirit has to be kept, but the unity of the faith is something to arrive at. It is a question of our arriving at the full truth of Christianity -- the full apprehension of the Christian faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, at the full-grown man. God's eternal purpose is connected with man, but man in sonship. It is a question of arriving at the knowledge of the Son of God, at the full-grown man, and that means our coming into sonship in full manhood. We need to cast out the bondwoman and her son and to be clear in our minds from other men. That is to say, we need the word of the cross before we can make a proper beginning. But here we have a vast range in the knowledge of the Son of God. How vast it is, dear brethren!

We may consider the Son of God as in the wilderness. Think of growing up to Him, coming to the full-grown man in that respect -- what He was in the wilderness. He was led by the Spirit in the wilderness. The devil says, "If Thou be the Son of God". What was His answer? Do we put our own interest, our needs, first? This all enters into our coming into "Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word of God". Man, but Man in Sonship! Only Man in Sonship could answer like that. "Though He were Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered". If we are brought into correspondence with the Lord Jesus, it means that every word of the ministry is going to have effect. We shall not be left behind or be dull of hearing as the Hebrews were; but shall live by every word of God. Each temptation brings out a feature of true manhood, and we are to grow up to Him as in the wilderness. That is fundamental. How can we answer to Him in the land if we do not answer to Him in the wilderness? We are to grow up to Him in all things who is the head. See Him in the garden of Gethsemane. We see Sonship in the perfection of obedience, "Nevertheless, not My will but Thine be done". What food for the soul! But then, see the Lord in resurrection. He says, "Go to My brethren and say to them, I ascend to My Father, and your Father, and to My God, and your God", John 20:17. Think of arriving at the knowledge of the Son of God on this line, to be able to stand alongside of Him, for, although ever having His own unique place, He brings us alongside of Him: "My Father, and your Father ... My God, and your God". What a range is open to us in connection with Sonship as seen in Christ risen and ascended! Isaac and Solomon are outstanding types of Christ as Son -- Isaac the intimate side and Solomon the glory side. Scripture is full of Christ. It is all intended to help us on this line -- the knowledge of the Son of God, at the full-grown man, and this qualifies us to fill out our place in the vessel, the assembly, and so it says, "at the measure of the stature of the fullness of the Christ". This refers to the assembly in its completeness. The more we arrive at the knowledge of the Son of God, at the full-grown man, the better we are able to fill out our place in the body, the assembly; the completion of the vessel is in mind. She is His fullness; that is what she is to arrive at. In our measure we can all have part in these operations, because it is said, "To each one of us has been given grace according to the measure of the gift of the Christ". But I would like to leave an impression from this passage of the provision that has been made for us to arrive at the full mind of God as expressed in a living Person, Lord Jesus Christ.

I read the verses in Hebrews because they bring in our side, the side of exercise. The apostle said he had many things to say; he had the whole mind of God to unfold concerning Christ, but he says "hard to be uttered", not because he was not ready to utter them, but because they were dull of hearing. There was a tendency to be sluggish and not to move in the current ministry. Peter speaks of the present truth. It needed grace for him to speak thus of a ministry not his own for undoubtedly Paul's ministry is in mind. Peter moved on, but the company at Jerusalem, as far as we know, had not moved on with Paul's ministry. They were sluggish, and this letter was written to rouse them and is intended to rouse us too. "For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have again need that one should teach you what are the elements of the beginning of the oracles of God, and are become such as have need of milk, and not of solid food". I do not want to speak of persons, but one has met people who specialize in a milk diet. You cannot grow to manhood, or do a man's work, on milk. You become weakly and undeveloped. Milk is good at any meal and can be taken in all stages of growth, but do not let us live on milk alone. We need strong meat. Some say we shall lose the young people unless we keep to the milk diet. I do not think so. Young people are helped by seeing others going on to perfection. It is the sluggish ones who say otherwise, those who do not want to go forward, but are satisfied with milk. Milk refers to the gospel as meeting our need, but strong meat refers to the Lord Jesus as the One in whom the whole mind of God is expressed, and opens up the sphere of God's purpose into which we are to enter. It goes far beyond our need; it is a question of God, His purposes, His counsels, and of Christ and the assembly. That is strong meat.

"For every one that partakes of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness". We need something more than milk diet to understand the truth of Romans -- the word of righteousness. It is a sad thing to remain a babe. It is possible to be a babe after being thirty or forty years on the road. The children of Israel were typically babes after thirty-eight years in the wilderness. When they faced up to the lesson of the brazen serpent they became men. When once you come to a judgment of man in the flesh and learn to give place to the Spirit, you are ready for the great thoughts of God and your senses become exercised to distinguish both good and evil. You are no longer dull of hearing like Barzillai, nor dull of taste and of sight like the people of Israel when Caleb and Joshua brought back the grapes of Eshcol. They had no taste for them; they wanted to go back to Egypt. But, having your senses exercised, you can discern good and evil. Caleb and Joshua could discern the good, which is the real test of spirituality, and they said that the land was a very, very good land. Have you discerned that the land into which God intends to bring you is very, very good? Do you know what is good, what is very good, and what is very, very good? That is holy discernment. There are certain things in Christianity which are good, others very good, and others again very, very good. If we have discernment we shall go in for the best. Caleb said it was a very, very good land. We are to learn to judge of and approve the things which are more excellent, and as our faculties develop in the discernment of good we shall become increasingly qualified to discern and judge evil.

"Wherefore, leaving the word of the beginning of the Christ, let us go on to what belongs to full growth". Let us not be detained. Let us be stimulated by being reminded that the whole mind of God is available to us; that we form part of the vessel concerning which the mind of God has been disclosed and the ministry of which completes the word of God. Let us be encouraged by the fact that great forces have been put into operation by the Man who has gone above the heavens in order to bring us into these things. Let us be encouraged to go on to perfection. It was the young people who came into the land; the old ones fell in the wilderness. When Caleb and Joshua urged forward movement, the old ones said, as it were, 'We shall lose the children'. But they themselves were lost, and the children went into the land with Caleb and Joshua. Children have their eyes on people who like Caleb and Joshua are going on to full growth.

May the Lord help us in these matters that we may all move on to completion, for His name's sake!

Lancing, May 17, 1948 (from Words of Grace and Comfort, 1949, 25:32 - 41)

JOYFULNESS

Luke 5:27 - 29, 36 - 38; Acts 2:2,4,44,46 - 47; Deuteronomy 16:10 - 17

I wish to speak of the fact that God would have us to be joyful -- individually, householdly and assembly-wise. If it is in His mind that we should be joyful, it is in view of our rendering to Him what is His due. If we are joyful we cannot forbear from rendering to God what is due to Him. So that in that sense God's joy is bound up with our joy. It is wonderful to think of God's joy. Scripture speaks of the glad tidings of the glory of the blessed God. And that word blessed means "happy". It is God in His happiness in blessing surrounding Himself with happy beings -- those who can respond to Him. Zephaniah say, "He will rest in His love; He will exult over thee with singing". So in all these matters, if we have joy, God has surpassing joy. What is on God's side must always exceed ours.

It is important to keep in mind that, so far as one sees in Scripture, God has only three units before Him. I am speaking, of course, of what is down here in testimony. The first is the individual Christian. Each individual is a unit in God's eyes, having his own history and his own place with God. Then there is the Christian household; God regards the Christian household as a unit. The word to the Philippian jailor is, "Believe on the Lord Jesus and thou shalt be saved". That is the individual -- the jailor. Then it adds, "thou and thy house"; that is another unit. He was baptised, he and all his straightway. So God regards the Christian household as a unit. In fact things began that way with Israel, for they were to take a lamb for a house. Thirdly, there is the assembly -- the greatest unit of all, far exceeding any other. We being many are one bread, one body. What God intends to secure in the fullest sense is the assembly -- the great universal vessel, but expressed in local companies.

I am convinced that, in the Christian position, any other unit than these is not of God, not any other kind of association even amongst Christians. Young people getting together by themselves and forming a kind of association is not of God. Youth movements are common today, but they are not of God. Such associations are not divinely recognized units. God supports what He has established, and He has established the individual, the household and the assembly, but He does not support what He has not established, however useful it may seem to men to be. In the end all such associations damage the testimony. If we want to taste divine joy, we must keep to divine units. God is prepared to support each one of us individually to an extent that we little conceive. "If God be for us, who can be against us?" He is entirely committed to each one of us as individual believers. "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him freely give us all things?" There is nothing too much for God to do for each one of us individually. He has proved His love in not sparing His Son. We little conceive what God is prepared to do for the individual Christian. If we did we should be full of jubilance and exultation in God, as apprehending in some degree what He would do for one man, one woman, or one child. He has given His Son and He has given the Holy Spirit, and has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ.

Levi is an example of an individual believer. The Lord saw him and said, "Follow Me", and it says, "having left all, rising up he followed Him". Later in the chapter the Lord brings in teaching to indicate what kind of a person Levi was -- a new skin full of new wine. In the earlier part we have the Lord meeting our need, but the result is that He Himself attracts the heart. This attraction leads Levi to rise up and follow the Lord. There is no doubt that he was a man full of joy, for he knew how to make others happy. You cannot make others happy if you are not happy yourself, and you cannot bring new wine into other people's hearts if you have none yourself. He made a great entertainment for Jesus in his house. I like that word entertainment; it was not one of those dull occasions when a lot of people are present, and everyone is afraid to speak. Such conditions are not joyful, but this is a great entertainment for the Lord Jesus. Do you think the Lord Jesus enjoyed it? I am sure He did. Would you not like to make an entertainment for the brethren, to have the brethren in your house, and find them all happy there? Levi aimed at that and did it successfully. He made a great entertainment for the Lord and he had a great crowd in his house. It is a great thing, whether we have little accommodation or much, to fill it. God's thought is filling; we are to be filled with the Spirit. He also says, "that my house may be filled", Luke 14:23. There is no doubt that Levi filled his house. If I have only a very small room, I can fill it. The Lord said of one, "She has done what she could". Whatever you have, fill it to capacity, but be sure it is a spiritual entertainment, not simply a meal. Brethren do not come just for a meal. Spiritual entertainment is not a question of speaking about anecdotes or exploits. What is wanted is something of Christ -- something spiritual making way for the Lord Himself to come in; as He said to Zacchaeus, "Today I must remain at thy house".

What Levi does in his house shows the kind of man he was. Of course there were the critics, those who criticized the kind of persons invited. But we do not base our invitations on natural or social considerations. That would not suit the Lord. He wants us to have in our houses the kind of company that is suitable to Him. If you are on right lines the Lord will answer the critics; He will defend His own. So He says here, "Can ye make the sons of the bride-chamber fast when the bridegroom is with them?" He brings in thoughts that are most stimulating. Then the Lord goes on to say, "No one puts new wine into old skins, otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and it will be poured out and the skins will be destroyed; but new wine is to be put into new skins and both are preserved". He is indicating the kind of man Levi was. If he was capable of making a great entertainment it was because he was a new skin containing the new wine. That is what the Lord has in mind to make every one of us, whether we have houses or not. He would have us all to be joyful, as new skins full of new wine.

Much of our difficulty lies in mixing things up: law and grace for instance, faith and works, and flesh and spirit. We are not under law but under grace. Let us enjoy it, and not mix faith and works. Faith has works, of course, but do not let us go back to dead works. Let us be clear on these matters, like Paul in Romans 7, so that each one of us realizes that he is a "new skin". I am the new thing, and the Spirit links on with me in that way -- "I myself", according to Romans 7, serve God's law; and "I myself" am found moving along with the Spirit in Romans 8 and thus the flesh is kept in its place. So we have the idea of the new skin and the new wine. That is God's thought, and it is true, in any case, abstractly that as believers we are "new skins" and have new wine. Let us be full of the Spirit, not marked by half measures and mixtures. Christianity is a joyful system, and Levi was a joyful man personally, but his household was affected by it too. Why should not our households be joyful places? Levi's was. God is out to secure households. He wants individuals full of joy and song, and households full of joy and song. Think of what it cost God to secure households, how He values them! It is "a lamb for a father's house, a lamb for a house".

Later in the gospel, as regards Zacchaeus' house, the Lord says, "Today salvation is come to this house, inasmuch as he also is a son of Abraham, for the Son of man has come to seek and save that which is lost", Luke 19:9 - 10. God is seeking lost households, and He wants complete households. Exodus 12 refers to fathers' houses. I wonder whether we are all fathers, whether we have the feelings of a father as patterned after God? If we have, we shall not be able to tolerate one being left out of things; they must all be brought in. Moses says, "We will go with our young and our old, our sons and our daughters". He would not leave any behind, for, he says, "we have a feast of Jehovah", Exodus 10:9. That is the true spirit of a father; all must come and be at the feast. A man who is joyful is influential, for joy is an influential thing. It influences the household. How influential the jailor was! He carried his whole household with him, in the middle of the night, too, for it says that he and all his were baptized straightway. He says, as it were, 'We must not put it off for a moment; bring them all in'. Then, it says, he rejoiced householdly in God. It was not a legal matter, his joy carried them all with him. That is a thing for all fathers to take account of. Are we influential enough to carry the whole family with us? It is not always easy to carry the young, nor indeed the old. Moses was not under-taking a light thing when he said, "We will go with our young and with our old", for there was the Red Sea to go through. It would have been easier to have left them behind, but no, they were all to go, not one was to be left behind.

So God would have our households joyful places. Baptism is a wonderful thing if properly understood. It makes households joyful places, for the members are baptized to the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Do you enjoy the Father in your home? Do you enjoy the Lord Jesus there? And the Holy Spirit? Have you ever thought of being filled with the Holy Spirit in your home? Why should not our homes be on a better level than they are? Individually and householdly we are to be full of joy and song and then this merges into the assembly. The assembly is dependent on the households and the households are dependent on the assembly. The households and the assembly are closely linked together at the end of Acts 2"and every day being constantly in the temple with one accord, and breaking bread in the house". Of course under Paul's ministry the breaking bread was put in its proper setting, but he speaks of "the assembly in thy house". There is to be no moral discrepancy. So in Psalm 42, where the psalmist speaks of moving up to the house of God, he recalls the day when he passed along with the throng, as he says, with the voice of joy and praise, a festive multitude (verse 4). What are we like on our way to the meeting? When we leave our homes, having the Lord's Supper in view, are we a festive multitude? This festive multitude was on the way to the meeting, so to say. Festivity had begun at home. In Luke 15 the father says, "Let us eat and be merry" -- God takes the lead in holy festivity. If we move up thus in this spirit, we shall be ready for the "feast of Jehovah". It will be no effort then to get the children along; they will be already in the spirit of it -- a festive multitude. God would miss the children if they were not there. He wants to see whole households at the feast.

In Deuteronomy 16 we have read about two feasts -- the feast of weeks and the feast of tabernacles. The word feast here means festival: what a great festival the Lord's Supper is! The feast of weeks refers to Acts 2, but it goes on and takes in the whole dispensation -- the gift of the Spirit and all that flows out of it. The feast of weeks would embrace all our meetings. It would include the meeting for ministry (or the meeting for the prophetic word, which is more accurate, because the prophetic word includes song; see 1 Chronicles 25:1 - 7), the reading meeting for enquiry in God's temple, and the prayer meeting -- praying in the Spirit. All these things are the result of the Spirit coming and are all embraced in the feast of weeks. What buoyancy that is intended to enter into them all! There should not be any painful pauses when we are together. In Acts 2:1 it says, "they were all together in one place". We can gather without being together. In verse 44 it says, "all that believed were together"; that does not mean that they were always together in assembly but they were together in heart and soul. If we are together thus, it will be manifest, when we do assemble, that we being many are one bread, one body. The feast involves assembling, for it speaks here of the place where Jehovah has put His name and that place is His assembly. So we gather in the light of His assembly, and as we gather we are to be really together, allowing nothing which would prevent the infinite blessing that the Spirit would bring in. Then in verse 11 it says, "thou shalt rejoice". Do we rejoice on all our occasions? "Thou shalt rejoice ... thou, and thy son, and thy daughter and thy bondman, and thy handmaid, and the Levite that is in thy gates, and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow". All are there. No member of the household is to be left out. You may say that only the males need have gone, but love will not leave one person behind. In the beginning of Samuel when Elkanah went up to sacrifice to Jehovah, he took his family with him, and also in Luke 2 we see the Lord's parents doing the same thing. So here it supposes love working and influential joy affecting not only the household but the stranger also. Let us get the stranger to the feast. If we know of any persons in whom the Spirit is working, let us get them to the feast.

Then the passage goes on to the feast of tabernacles, which links with Paul's ministry. If we are in the gain of the feast of weeks the Spirit will be unhindered and He will lead us on to the fullness of things -- the whole counsel of God. The feast of tabernacles implies the fullness of Paul's ministry and the Lord's Supper opens the door for our enjoyment of it in a special way. It says, "When thou hast gathered in the produce of thy floor and of thy winepress". It supposes that we have arrived at the fullness of the harvest in our spirits with God. The Spirit Himself is the earnest of our inheritance. Think of the produce of the vine and the olive all gathered in, an abundance of oil and wine. So it says. "Rejoice in thy feast", verse 14. Usually the feasts were called Jehovah's feasts, but here the Spirit of God calls it "thy feast". It is not only God's feast but ours; where He finds His supreme joy we find ours. So it says, "Thou shalt rejoice ... thou, and thy son, and thy daughter and thy bondman", and so on. What pleasure God has in seeing whole households at the feast. He wants to see all the children there, and the stranger too. We need not fear the stranger being there if we are in power; such will be held by the power and joy of the occasion. You say, 'We are very weak, we do not feel equal to this kind of thing'. But let us have the divine thought before us, and God will give His help. The dispensation is to end on this note of festivity and spiritual joy. When things are in abundance naturally our appreciation of spiritual things often diminishes. The present shortages are in the ordering of God, emphasising to us the fact that all that is best remains freely available; spiritual things are not straitened at all, there is scope in the Spirit for unlimited joy and festivity. So it says, "Seven days shalt thou hold a feast to Jehovah thy God in the place that Jehovah will choose, for Jehovah thy God will bless thee in all thy produce and in all the work of thy hands, and thou shalt be WHOLLY joyful".

Then it continues, "they shall not appear before Jehovah empty; each shall give according to that which is in his power to give". God is not asking for something that is not within our power, for it says, "according to the blessing of Jehovah thy God which He hath given thee". He has filled us with joy individually, and householdly, and now assembly-wise we are full of the spirit of festivity and we can say, "Of Thine own have we given Thee". He has blessed us with the corn and the oil and the new wine -- what can we do but give it to Him? So God has His portion. He calls it our feast; it is most touching that He should do so. But it is also a feast to Jehovah. His joy is supreme in it.

May God help us in these matters for His name's sake!

Ilford, February 10, 1951 (from Words of Grace and Comfort, 1951, 27:145 - 53)

THE TESTIMONY TRIUMPHANT

2 Timothy 2:1 - 6, 14 - 26; John 20:16 - 17

My desire is that all of us, whether young or old, may be secured without reserve for the testimony of God. It is a great thing to be linked up with something which is triumphant, and which is going through when everything else is overthrown, and the only thing I can speak of thus is the testimony of God. Other things established on this earth will come down, but, whether we fail or not, the testimony of God will go through in victory. It may mean, as it has meant in the past for some, the laying down of our lives, but that is not defeat. Paul in this chapter says, "Remember Jesus Christ raised from among the dead according to my gospel". So that, as we enter into the battle in connection with the testimony of God, we have this as a banner before us. Dying is not defeat for a Christian. God has the last word -- resurrection -- and all that is being carried here in the testimony is coming forth in the power of resurrection. Jesus has led the way; He went into death and it looked like defeat. But Paul says, "Remember Jesus Christ raised from among the dead". There was complete victory in the death and resurrection of Christ. And so Paul says, "Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ". A Christian moving in faith is always victorious; nothing can overthrow him. Death itself does not deter him, for his hope is in God who raises the dead. It is in the power of all this that the testimony goes on at the present time, carried by a people who fear God but fear none else.

God would have us all in this. Paul is writing to Timothy that he might be fully in it: "Be not ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner". Paul can speak of Him as "my Lord" and so did Mary Magdalene. We can never be properly in fellowship if we cannot say that. But if you can say "my Lord" to Him and if I am saying "my Lord" to Him, then he is our Lord, that is how the fellowship comes into being in a practical way. He is your Lord and my Lord and we go along together; we are both set to maintain what is due to His name. So Paul says, "Be not ashamed of the testimony of our Lord". We are not to be ashamed of it. There is reproach connected with it, but Peter says, "If ye be reproached ... happy are ye". Also the Holy Spirit is committed to the testimony. If we are in the testimony of our Lord, "the Spirit of glory and of God" will rest upon us. He may be already dwelling in us, but it becomes apparent to everyone that a person has received the Holy Spirit when the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon him. In this manner Stephen went into death and thus his enemies were defeated. No one could defeat a man like Stephen.

"Be not ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me, His prisoner". We can never be properly in the testimony if we are ashamed of Paul. The enemy has right through the ages sought to keep Paul a prisoner. Those who obey Paul's doctrines will suffer reproach, but do not be ashamed of Paul. We cannot give up Paul's ministry. This chapter begins, "Be strong, therefore, my child", and it brings out features of spiritual manhood. While there are certain things that only man as man can do, yet the features of spiritual manhood should mark women as well as men. It is a question of courage, intelligence and affection in the testimony. And so the first feature required in one who will be fully in the testimony is to be a child of Paul, and I would desire that everyone here might be a child of Paul. Follow up his ministry fully. None of can say we have fully grasped it. Peter speaks of certain things written by Paul as "hard to be understood". It is for us to go in for these things that are hard to be understood. They are the great secrets of God, and what greater honour could we have than for God to let us into His secrets! The great secrets of God are embodied in Paul's ministry and they centre in Christ and the assembly. Then we are not only to go in for his ministry, but to be marked by his spirit. Paul could say he was the chief of sinners, and "less than the least of all saints". He was glad to be the servant of all for Jesus' sake. Paul's children are marked by the same spirit of true and genuine humility, taking always the lowest place. Only thus can we help each other. So he says, "Thou therefore my child, be strong in the grace which is in Christ Jesus". For those who are set to understand Paul's ministry, and to be imitators of Paul, all the grace that is in Christ Jesus is available. It is unlimited. John says, "And of His fulness we all have received and grace upon grace"; grace upon grace, never to be exhausted. There is everything to encourage us to go forward.

The apostle continues, "Take thy share in suffering as a good soldier of Jesus Christ". We are all needed as soldiers of Jesus Christ. We are soon coming out following Him as the armies of heaven, but let us all be in the army tonight. The Lord Jesus has from His side enlisted all of us to be His soldiers. We learn of old that all the Israelites were enlisted for military service from twenty years old and upward. That would refer in our day to everyone who has received the Holy Spirit. You may be only twelve years and yet have received the Holy Spirit, and in virtue of this be twenty years old spiritually. It is your privilege to commit yourself to the testimony of our Lord. The moment you do that it means that you recognize that you are a soldier, for the fellowship is a military position. Jesus has enlisted you to be a soldier, for the truth must be defended. Men are prepared to defend what they value. They defend their fatherland and homes. We are called to defend the truth of the assembly and to maintain all that is due to the Lord's name. We have the most precious things to defend. The soldiers in Israel defended their houses, their tribes, and, above all, the tabernacle where God was dwelling. The Christian soldier always fights for God. He holds his house for God, he holds the local gathering for God, and he holds in his affections the one body on earth, as we may say, the great tabernacle system. He is prepared to defend all these things, not by imposing suffering on others as men do, but by taking his share in suffering. The Christian conflict is carried through to victory by soldiers prepared to suffer, not by the soldiers who cause others to suffer. If we are prepared to suffer, God will maintain the truth. It involves standing for the truth in a spirit of meekness. We may try to maintain what is right in fleshly energy, but the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. It is easier to act in the flesh in support of what is right, than to act in the spirit of Christ; but in doing so we bring disgrace on the truth, the very truth we are standing for. A Christian soldier is prepared to suffer. God will see that the truth goes through and will stand by us. Even if we have to suffer unto death, God will raise us from the dead; we shall be vindicated then. God vindicates us even now as we identify ourselves with the truth.

If anyone contends in the games, he is not crowned unless he contends lawfully. God wants us not only as soldiers but He would have us as true athletes running the race. We are pressing on for the "prize of the calling on high of God in Christ Jesus". But we must contend lawfully, and this applies to matters which come up in our localities. Sometimes when fresh features of truth are coming out, in our anxiety to get others to accept them, we exaggerate things and go beyond the truth and then, even if we gain our point, the brethren will be damaged. We need to have the right object before us, but we must not drop into the idea that the end justifies the means. In seeking to bring the truth before the brethren we must not go beyond the truth. He is not crowned unless he contends lawfully. A man may win the race, but if he has broken the rules he does not receive the crown. We, in seeking to bring the brethren into the truth, need to see that we keep within the range of the truth in question, otherwise, even though we reach our end, we shall not have the Lord's approval.

The husbandman must labour before partaking of the fruit. Everyone here is called to be a labourer. A labourer is one who does not mind hard work, nor does he mind what kind of work it is. Each hour of work has helped to forward the fruit of the vineyard. In Romans 16 it says, "Greet Mary, who laboured much for you". Some of the greatest workers have been sisters. They are prepared to give heavy and devoted service so that fruit may accrue to God. There will be no fruit in the vineyard without labour.

These four things are set together. We have Paul's child, a soldier of Jesus Christ, a person contending in the games, and then a labourer. Would we all not desire to be marked by these features, whether brothers or sisters? Young sisters going out into the office are in the front line as soldiers of the Lord. Boys and girls at school who have to say 'No' to things of this world are already in the ranks. Of necessity young Christians have to face the foe, and the Lord loves them and will stand by them.

Now in the later part of the chapter he says, in verse 15, "Strive diligently to present thyself approved to God". We come here to something more skilled. A workman is a skilled person. He speaks here of "cutting in a straight line the word of truth". This would be an accurate worker. You cannot be a skilled workman all at once, but you cannot be too young to begin your training. This verse refers to the Levite in full maturity. It is the spiritual age of 30. At 25 they went into the work, but at 30 definite responsibilities were allotted to them. Paul speaks of Priscilla and Aquila as his fellow-workmen in Christ Jesus, showing that sisters come into it as well as brothers. This involves the highest level of workmanship, meaning that they entered into Paul's knowledge of the mystery of the Christ, so that they were able to work intelligently in their labours, like a builder who has the architect's plan before him. Timothy was to strive diligently to this end. It needs diligence "to present thyself approved to God". What a blessed thing to be approved to God! It is not a question of men, but of God looking at the work. No one but a child of Paul could pass such a searching examination.

Now verse 21 speaks of a vessel, an important view of the believer. The apostle says, "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you?" What a wonderful thing that each one of us here is a vessel of the Holy Spirit! Yet many Christians who have the Spirit are linked up with unholy and unclean associations, and are not available for the Master's use. If you are a vessel of the Holy Spirit, He is dwelling in you so that you may be available to the Master. To be available it is essential for each one of us to act upon the injunction, "Let everyone that names the name of the Lord withdraw from iniquity". Further it is necessary that he should separate from vessels to dishonour. This will cause much pain of heart. It is one things to separate from iniquity; but we cannot, except with great grief, separate from fellow-believers. But if they will not leave the iniquitous system we must leave them. It is imperative to do so. The Holy Spirit dwells in us and we cannot remains in unholy associations. So that if our fellow-believers will not leave unholy associations we must leave them. We shall not help them by remaining; we shall only encourage them to remain. We shall help them most by being faithful ourselves; and thus we shall become vessels to honour, meet for the Master's use, prepared for every good work. The most important good work is service Godward. The Lord says, "She has wrought a good work toward me", and again, "The Father seeketh such as His worshippers". What is for God must be first. How wonderful to be serviceable to the Master, so that He can freely use us in the service of praise to God, as well as in blessing to man! In seeking to serve men, many Christians cut themselves off from the true assembly service to God; and in so doing they do not truly serve men, because they have no place to lead men to. Let us see to it that each of us is "a vessel to honour, sanctified, serviceable to the Master"!

Finally in verse 24 Paul speaks of "a bondman of the Lord". This underlies all the other features. We make very little headway until we recognize that we are the Lord's bondmen and bondwomen. The Holy Spirit is free with such persons, as we read in Acts, "Upon My bondmen and upon My bondwomen in those days will I pour out of My Spirit and they shall prophesy". There is nothing happier than to be a slave of Jesus Christ and a slave of the saints for His sake; and the bondman or slave of the Lord is marked by the spirit of His Master. He is gentle towards all, meek, and patient. These features are to mark us in every aspect of service. Let us all aspire to have the features that were to mark Timothy; Paul's child, the soldier of Jesus Christ, the one who contends lawfully, the labourer, the skilled workman, the sanctified vessel and the bondman.

Now I read a verse or two in John 20, to draw attention to the features of womanhood, and while these features would come out specially in the sisters, yet they are to mark the assembly as a whole, because, whether we are brothers or sisters, there are to be feminine features proper to the assembly. We have been speaking of features which fit us for the testimony here, but in Mary Magdalene we have features which would lead to the calling on high. It needs the features proper to womanhood, features that would specially mark sisters, but also are to be seen in the whole company. Mary Magdalene followed the Lord in selfless devotion all the way. She was amongst those who followed Jesus in His path, ministering to the Lord of their substance, going from city to city and village to village in devoted service. Those women had never been formally called like the apostles into the service, but they went in devoted love to the Lord to lavish their all upon Him. That is what I meant by womanly features -- selfless and devoted affection for the Lord.

We find Mary Magdalene and other women standing by the cross (John 19:25). It needed true womanly affections to go as far as this in public reproach and shame. They also followed to the tomb and saw "how His body was placed", Luke 23:55. The men were not found there, but the women were there, showing where womanly affections would carry the saints. And then very early in the morning on the first day of the week, when it was yet dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb. Peter and John did not receive the message; they returned home, but Mary stood at the sepulchre weeping. Nothing would satisfy her but Jesus Himself. "Tell me where thou hast laid Him, and I will take Him away". It shows a love that did not calculate -- a weak woman would take Him away. It was the link of love. She must have Him at all costs. It is to a love like that that Jesus manifested Himself. It is a heart like that that is ready for the highest truth. Mere knowledge or ability will not fit you for the highest truth; what is needed is a heart full of love for Christ. So, in speaking of the hope of God's calling, Paul prayed in Ephesians 1 "that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, would give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of Him, being enlightened in the eyes of your heart, that ye might know what is the hope of His calling". It is a question of being enlightened in the eyes of our heart. Mary, a true woman (the Lord calls her "Woman"), is an example of one so enlightened. With a heart full of love for Christ, it was a simple matter for the Lord to enlighten her in the eyes of her heart. Do you think Peter and John would be ready for a message like this? Not at that time. But this woman, with a heart full of love, was ready without the slightest hesitation to receive the greatest light that had ever come to a creature. She became at once the most intelligent creature in the universe; she had laid hold of what is the hope of His calling. We are Christ's brethren and sons of God; and corporately we are the assembly which is Christ's body.

One would desire that we might all be secured for the testimony unreservedly, being marked by the features of manhood that are necessary in facing the exigencies of the testimony according to 2 Timothy 2; and also by the features of affection proper to womanhood and thus proper to the assembly as a whole, which give us the capacity to take in the most profound thoughts of God, so that we are able intelligently to enter into our heavenly relationships. May the Lord help us for His name's sake!

Endbach, Germany, August 4, 1951 (from Words of Grace and Comfort, 1952, 28:129 - 37)

THE MAN OF WAR, OF WISDOM AND OF REST

1 Chronicles 28:2 - 3,6; 1 Chronicles 28:26 - 28; 1 Chronicles 22:9 - 10,17 - 19; 1 Kings 3:18; 1 Kings 4:1

I wish to say a word on the Lord Jesus Christ as the Man of war, the Man of wisdom, and the Man of rest, and to show the importance of our taking character from Him, so that, in our measure we become men of war, men of wisdom and men of peace and rest. All these features are necessary if the assembly is to function as the sanctuary of God and if the service of praise is to be what it should be.

We owe everything initially to the fact that the Lord Jesus is a Man of war. If He were not a Man of war none of us would have been delivered from the enemy's power. No man can be his own saviour. We were held by forces which were entirely beyond our power to meet, and so the Lord Jesus came in to flesh and blood conditions in view of conflict. "Since therefore the children partake of blood and flesh, He also, in like manner, took part in the same, that through death He might annul him who has the might of death, that is, the devil; and might set free all those who through fear of death through the whole of their life were subject to bondage", Hebrews 2:14 - 15. He delivered us out of the land of Egypt and out of the house of bondage -- why? Because the word was "Let My son go that he may serve Me". The Lord has delivered us for the service of God. If anyone is slack or indifferent as to the service of God, let me remind you that the Lord Jesus entered in conflict and into death to deliver you for the service of God and not for anything less. He did not go into death, bear the wrath of God, and bear your sins in His body on the tree, simply to save you from the consequences. He did all that to secure you and me livingly, vitally and wholeheartedly in the service of God. After Israel had come through the Red Sea, the word was, "Let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them". God cannot be served suitably apart from the sanctuary. So, if we are secured for the service of God, we must begin to think about the sanctuary and the part each one is called to fulfil in its formation.

It is evident that we owe more than we can measure to the fact that the Lord Jesus came into flesh and blood conditions to be a Man of war. He was not a Man of rest here; He said, "foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man has not where to lay His head". His whole course was one of conflict, but He ever had in view the final battle-ground. As a Man of war, He chose the battle-ground, "that through death" -- that was the battle-ground -- "that through death He might annul him who has the might of death, that is, the devil". None of us could have done that; we are powerless against the devil. Now that we have put our faith in Christ, we can resist the devil and he will flee from us, but we would have had no power against the devil if he had not been annulled by the Lord Jesus. What a Warrior Jesus is! Then, in Timothy, Paul speaks of "our Saviour Jesus Christ, who has annulled death, and brought to light life and incorruptibility by the glad tidings", 2 Timothy 1:10. The last enemy to be destroyed is death, and He has annulled death, not only him that had the power of death. He has annulled death itself, and brought life and incorruptibility to light. Death is another enemy which we could not meet at all; death vanquishes every member of the human race; no man can rise again in his own power. But the Lord Jesus has annulled death so that, for those who have faith in Him, death is a completely defeated foe; in fact it is our property, death is ours. He has led captivity captive. That which held us in captivity He has made ours, and death is one of the weapons in our armoury. How much we owe to our Saviour Jesus Christ! The believer is already in life. He has life in Christ Jesus and enjoys it in the power of the Spirit. We could not serve or worship God if we did not know life beyond death. We need to be delivered from the power of Satan typified in Pharaoh and his taskmasters, and we need to be delivered from the pressure of death, if we are to serve God. All has been done in view of our being wholeheartedly in the service of God.

The conflict still goes on, but not on the same basis. The fundamental battles have been won, and in those the Lord Jesus had to fight the fight alone. Nevertheless the conflict goes on, but the enemy now has the character of the "lords of this darkness". If only the light enters the soul of man he gets deliverance; so Satan's only hope now is to keep men in the dark. So it is said, "our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but against principalities, against authorities, against the universal lords of this darkness, against spiritual power of wicked-ness in the heavenlies", Ephesians 6:12. In one way it is a simple kind of conflict. We have not to meet him who had the power of death, for he has been annulled; the great enemies are down. We have only to meet an enemy who is seeking to darken people's minds as to what the Lord Jesus has done. The moment the light breaks in, he has lost his power over the soul, and our business is to see that the light is kept shining. How simple our part is, compared with what the Lord Jesus did! He is available to us. We can be strong in the Lord and in the might of His strength; that is the only way to stand. We are to put on the panoply of God so that we do not become casualties. The moment I become a casualty I am of no more service in the army for the time being. I am out of the fight and, as far as I am concerned, the enemy will get his way and blind people's eyes. But I ought to be shining as a light in the world, holding forth the word of life, and for that I need the panoply of God. Would to God that we really shone! Would to God that we were like heavenly luminaries here on earth, which no power of Satan could obliterate! For that we need to be strong in the Lord and in the might of His strength, and to have on the panoply of God. If any part of the armour of missing, Satan will get in and we shall cease to shine. If our loins are not girt about with truth, he will get a point of attack and we shall cease to shine. If we have not the breast-plate of righteousness, our conscience will be defiled and we shall cease to shine. But if we are clad in the panoply of God, we who were once darkness will be light in the Lord, and the lords of this darkness will be defeated. Think of how the light shone in Paul. A light above the brightness of the sun shone upon him and that light radiated from him in the presence of the dignitaries of this world.

As we shine, the shining exposes, for light makes everything manifest. People do not like anyone who shines. Men would rather give up the warmth and genial influence of the light than be exposed, than to be shown what they really are. If a Christian is shining, there is the warmth and attractiveness of the light, but nevertheless it shows men to be what they are. So you will meet with opposition, and yet, if a person is shining, what a difference it makes in the office or the school! Where God is working, and God is working all the time, there will be souls who will be prepared for the exposure in order to have the warmth and genial comfort of the light, and they will be secured for Christ. So that in our conflict we are not against men, we are for men. We do not wrestle against blood and flesh; we are not against any man; our struggle is with principalities and authorities, the universal lords of this darkness, and that is so even when darkness comes in amongst the brethren. We are not against anyone, but we are concerned that the light should shine, it must shine whatever happens, and if that is to be so we all need to be military men. Shining is referred to in the most advanced epistles. It sounds simple, but you will never shine if you are not a military man; you need to be a man of war with all the armour on, and then you will be able to shine. But then a young person can put the armour on; it is available for all Christians, and young Christians often shine best. We may all take character from Christ as the Man of War. He came into the world as light; He was the true light which lightens every man. But men refused the exposure in spite of the warmth and healing rays. Men loved darkness rather than light, because their deed were evil. But God is working all the time and we must count on this. There will be some who accept the exposure and do the truth, and come to the light. In John's gospel, all the way through, people were coming to the light, yet the opposition was there all the time. The Lord was continually surrounded by enemies, but the light shone brighter and brighter. The more He was attacked the brighter the light shone.

The result of conflict is spoil; spoil is needed for the house of God and in the service of God. 1 Chronicles 26:26 speaks of what King David and the chief fathers and the captains over thousands and hundreds and captains of the host dedicated from the wars and out of the spoil to maintain the house of Jehovah. If we are not men of war, we shall secure no spoil. Think of the spoil the Lord Jesus has secured. It is out of the captivity that He has led captive that He builds the house of God. We are all in that captivity. We were captives to Satan, but He has led the whole captivity captive, and so we have become spoil; and as we are prepared to face matters of conflict, we shall secure spoil, spoil in our own souls and in the souls of others; and God will give us others to walk with; we shall secure spoil as the fruit of the light shining.

Because David was a man of war and had shed blood, God said that he could not build the house. The house cannot be built in war time, so to speak. In war time the spoil was gathered; it was so great that it really could not be computed, but that is not construction. Having secured the spoil, constructive work is needed. If the sanctuary is to be built, peaceable conditions are essential. And so the man of war was not to build, but God told David that his son would be a man of rest. His name, Solomon, means "peaceful". In his days God would give peace and quietness. Peaceable conditions are to be our objective. A Christian is not a war-monger, nor is he characteristically war-minded. He is always ready for war, he is always to wear the armour and take his share in suffering as a good soldier; but characteristically he is a son of peace, and a peace-maker. These things sound contradictory, but they are not so. Even though we have to engage in warfare we always have in mind to secure peaceable conditions amongst the saints. The Lord went into death to make peace. He made peace by the blood of His cross. In Ephesians 2 it says that He is our peace, and that by His cross He has slain the enmity. Five or six times in the New Testament God is called the God of peace, and in almost every apostolic salutation there is the word 'peace' -- "grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ". The Lord Himself is called the Lord of peace. The Christian should be a peace-maker and a son of peace. Although he has to engage in war, it is all in view of securing peaceable conditions on a right basis amongst the saints. The fruit of righteousness in peace is sown for those who make peace, but he must make it on a righteous basis.

But then, on the way to the building of the house, Solomon, the man of peace, shines as a man of wisdom in dealing with moral issues connected with those within, that is, within the company of the saints. "All Israel heard of the judgment which the king had judged; and they feared the king, for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him, to do justice", 1 Kings 3:28. With the Lord Jesus it is not only that the wisdom of God is in Him; He is the wisdom of God and the power of God, and He settled every moral issue at the cross and will yet direct and sustain a world of glory where God will have His supreme place. The One who is the wisdom and power of God is equal to settling every issue that arises in our localities. In addition to the general conflict the time comes when we have to deal with persons who, although they are linked up with that testimony and should be shining and in conflict themselves, have become tools of Satan, and are wielding darkening influences among the saints. Solomon's wisdom shines in the way he dealt with these. David, the man of war, was dealing with enemies without and did not touch these matters, but to Solomon, the man of peace, David say, as it were, If you are to be the man of peace and to have an undisturbed reign so that you can build the sanctuary without any hindrance, you must see to it that moral issues are settled within; you must deal with persons who are lending themselves to the service of hostile powers. There could be no settled peace while men such as Adonijah, Joab, Abiathar and Shimei were active. They would have undermined the whole position. Adonijah says, "I will be king" -- a man like that is of no service to the saints. Paul said he was less than the least of all saints. A man who says, "I will be king", will bring in disruption. You cannot build the house with a man like that free and active among the saints. Although Adonijah was given a breathing space, what he says to Bathsheba proves he had not changed at all. He says, "all the faces of the men of Israel were toward me to make me king, but Jehovah has turned the kingdom to my brother". He was still thinking that all the faces of the men of Israel were toward him. He had not judged himself; that notion was still in his mind. Such a man has to be dealt with although he was the king's brother.

Then there was Joab, a man who had been in the forefront of conflict, who had fought battles, had obtained spoil and had dedicated it to the house of God, who on one occasion had sought to prevent David from doing what was wrong. You say, He must have been a good brother; yet see what ambition was there. He was man who could not tolerate a rival. Why should he be concerned about a rival? Because he wanted a place himself. And so he killed Abner and Amasa, who were better men than himself. He was prepared to murder anyone who showed signs of outshining him. That is a terrible thing. If we are really serving the Lord we shall never resent being outshone. The more others shine the better; we all get the benefit of it. David said that the sons of Zeruiah were too hard for him. They did not partake of his spirit, for David never had ambitions for himself. He only desired power as king in order to serve his God. He shines in the Spirit of Christ. He is just a servant of God and of the people. He would use all his power and influence as king to make his God known. How different Joab was, slaying two brothers who were better men than himself, lest in any way he should be outshone; and so, at length, under Solomon, in divine wisdom, that man was dealt with. Things may go on for a long time, but at last they are exposed.

Then Solomon thrust Abiathar out from the priesthood. Abiathar was the high priest, a man who had had a most honoured position in the service of God. But he went astray in connection with Adonijah. It proved that priestly instincts and sensibilities had not developed properly with him. He occupied a position that he was not equal to and at last he was exposed, and even such a one as he was thrust out from the priesthood. We feel it keenly in our day when someone is thrust out from the priesthood; we feel what God is losing, and yet there is no other way if the reign of peace is to be secured, and the sanctuary to be built.

Then Shimei, the Benjaminite who cursed David, is exposed. He had had a long time to change, but had not changed; he had never severed his heart's link with Saul, and so he is exposed. He was not prepared to keep within what is proper to the assembly; he leaves Jerusalem. His ignorance of assembly principles exposes him, as we might say, and so he is dealt with. All these incidents show what is essential for true peace. If we are to secure the realm of peace, we have to deal with evil within.

David had dealt with enemies without and Solomon with evil within, and now there were conditions of peace for constructive work. In 1 Chronicles 22:19 David commanded all the princes of Israel to help Solomon his son: "Now set your heart and your soul to seek Jehovah your God; and arise and build the sanctuary of Jehovah Elohim, to bring the ark of the covenant of Jehovah, and the vessels of the sanctuary of God into the house that is to be built unto the name of Jehovah". That is the word for us. At the present moment we should all be in this matter, engaged in constructive work in our localities, so that sanctuary conditions may be secured. "Let them build Me a sanctuary", was the early proposal after they had left Egypt. In that setting the reference is to our local exercises, the assembly in the wilderness, and unless we face matters there we shall never be able to rise in our spirits to the idea of the assembly according to divine purpose. Unless there is something concrete locally that answers to sanctuary conditions, the Spirit of God will not be free to lead us into the full and blessed thoughts of the sanctuary of which it says in Psalm 78, "He built His sanctuary like the heights". That is referred to in Exodus 15, where it is said, "The Sanctuary, Lord, that Thy hands have prepared". That refers to the assembly according to divine purpose, viewed entirely as God's work. He built His sanctuary like the heights; but unless we are doing some building here and un-less there are, in some concrete way, sanctuary conditions down here we shall not be free in our spirits to enter into the realm of divine purpose. But, if there are such conditions, the Spirit of God will be free to lead us in our spirits to see things as God sees them, to look at things as though they were already accomplished, to enter in and look out upon the whole realm of glory according to the prayer of Ephesians 3. There must be something concrete here as a base, and then the Spirit of God will lead us on and give us a view of the whole realm of glory and of the assembly as the sanctuary which He has built like the heights. Thus the service of God, though outwardly feeble here, will proceed as taking on the glory of that eternal scene, into which we enter in spirit. And so the word here is to all the princes. You may say, I am not a prince. Then I would say, What have you been doing since you were converted? What have you been doing since the saints have learned to value the Spirit more? A prince is a man who has learned to value the Spirit and to give the Spirit His place. That need not take forty years. Israel means Prince of God. It is open to all of us to be princes. It is a question of learning to walk, not according to flesh, but according to Spirit, and to mind, not the things of the flesh, but the things of the Spirit. If you do so, you will have power to join in this constructive line of things; and, indeed, it is only one who is moving in the Spirit who can be a man of peace. Otherwise the works of the flesh become manifest in us and there is nothing peaceable about them. "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace ..". A man walking in the Spirit is a son of peace and he is a peace-maker. However much he may have to touch war-like matters, his object is to secure conditions of rest and peace among the saints, so that under the impulse and direction of the true Solomon the constructive work may go on.

May the Lord help us in this matter to take character from Himself in our little measure! He is so great in all these ways, so far beyond anyone else, as the Man of war, the Man of wisdom, the Man of peace, but yet in our little way we are to take character from Him and to be men of war, always ready to be called upon; to be men of wisdom in local matters, and to be men of peace, engaged in constructive work, with a view to the sanctuary of God being known by the saints and the sanctuary service proceeding in power.

Sutton Coldfield, March 26, 1955 (from Words of Grace and Comfort, 1956, 32:113 - 25)

THE GOSPEL OF GOD: WHAT IT IS, WHERE IT IS AND WHERE IT LEADS

Romans 1:1 - 6,16; Romans 16:25 - 27; 2 Timothy 1:6 - 9,15; 2 Timothy 4:6 - 7; Colossians 1:23 - 26

I wish to speak a few words about the gospel; firstly, as to what it is; secondly, where it is, and thirdly, where it leads. I would ask everyone here whether he or she stands for the truth of the gospel. The first Scripture shows that the gospel was committed to Paul in a special way. He introduces himself as, "bondman of Jesus Christ, a called apostle, separated to God's glad tidings". There is no question but that Paul had the gospel. Then he proceeds to tell us the scope of it (verse 5), "By whom we have received grace and apostleship in behalf of His name, for obedience of faith among all the nations". The gospel of God which Paul had received was for all nations, for French and for English, for Marseille and for Paris as well as for London. It is the gospel of God concerning His Son. People who do not accept it are disobedient to God, for it is preached "for obedience of faith among all the nations". Therefore those who do not accept it will come into judgment.

Now the first question I wish to raise is, What is the gospel? At the end of this epistle to the Romans, Paul says, "Now to Him that is able to establish you, according to my glad tidings and the preaching of Jesus Christ". Who gave Paul the gospel? He tells us in Galatians 1:15 - 16. "God, who set me apart even from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me, that I may announce Him as glad tidings among the nations". We can have no doubt therefore, as to who is the subject of the gospel. God's Son is the subject. Why is God's Son presented as the subject of the gospel? That men may be brought into sonship. A gospel that does not bring men into sonship is not Paul's gospel. It may be part of it, but we are speaking about the entire gospel. God looks for us in these last days to hold to the gospel in its entirety, and this means not only the forgiveness of sins, but deliverance from the power of sin through the gift of the Spirit. Paul, quoting from Hosea, says, "And it shall be, in the place where it was said to them, Ye are not my people, there shall they be called Sons of the living God", Romans 9:26.

But then Paul adds, "and the preaching of Jesus Christ", Romans 16:25. What does that mean? It means that God has only one Man before Him, and that is Jesus Christ. The gospel is not to improve man in the flesh, for he cannot be improved. He can be trained to be amiable, but an amiable man still hates Christ. You cannot improve that man. The "preaching of Jesus Christ" means that, in the cross of Christ, God has for ever condemned sin in the flesh. Our old man has been crucified with Him and we have been buried with Him, so that we, as in flesh, have been put out of God's sight for ever, and God has one Man -- Jesus Christ -- only before Him. "Examine your own selves if ye be in the faith", writes Paul; "prove your own selves: do ye not recognize yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you, unless indeed ye be reprobates?", 2 Corinthians 13:5. Anyone who professes to be a Christian and has not Jesus Christ in him is a reprobate, but a man who has truly received the gospel, and has been born again by the living and abiding word of God, judges himself and Christ lives in him. Can the sons of God be any other than those who have Jesus Christ in them? God does not adopt man in the flesh. He adopts those who are of the faith of Jesus Christ. Paul was a living expression of such a one. He says, "I am crucified with Christ, and no longer live, I, but Christ lives in me", Galatians 2:20. That is why he so fully enjoyed sonship.

I will now move on to my other question, i.e., Where is the gospel? We have already noticed how the gospel was committed to Paul. To hear the full gospel you would have to listen to Paul. But in the days when 2 Timothy was written, Paul was in prison. It is a testing time when Paul is in prison. That is his position today. The religious leaders of Christendom keep him in prison. They dare not let him out of prison because, if they did so, their system would crumble right down to the ground. They dare not accept Paul's ministry. And you will find that, if you accept Paul's ministry, you will be in prison, too, in the sense that you also will be restricted. Not many people will want to listen to you. Many Christians would like to have a certain part of the gospel but not the whole gospel. How few listen to Paul today! Even many companies who call themselves by the name of brethren have parted company with Paul. They say, The path is too restricted, we must have more scope to preach the gospel. But the gospel is in prison. 2 Timothy 1:8 shows this is so: "Be not therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner; but suffer evil along with the glad tidings". Very few people are willing to listen to the gospel, as Paul had it. In this chapter the gospel was suffering; it was in prison with Paul, and Timothy was to suffer evil along with the gospel. If we stand for the gospel as Paul had it, we shall suffer evil; our fellow Christians will speak against us and persecute us, and part company with us.

Then he says, "All who are in Asia, of whom is Phygellus and Hermogenes, have turned away from me". The fact that he names Phygellus and Hermogenes shows that they were well known. I suppose that at one time they had been very serviceable; they may have been at Ephesus. The church in Ephesus had not given up Christianity, but it had turned away from Paul. Paul says, they, "have turned away from me", but the Lord sends a message to Ephesus according to Revelation 2:4 - 5, through the apostle John. He says, "I have against thee, that thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works". First love and first works go together. Turning away from Paul is sure evidence of departure from first love for Christ. Go back to Paul, accept the whole of his ministry. Do not be hindered by the feeling of restriction, for the state of Christendom is such that to be faithful to the Lord we must accept these prison conditions and not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord nor of Paul His prisoner.

At the beginning of the church's history, there was indeed the reproach of Christ, but there was not the reproach of the broken state of Christendom such as exists today. But we must not try to avoid that reproach by leaving Paul. If we do, the Lord will say, "Thou hast left thy first love". Put Him first. Christ is the Truth and I must stand for the whole truth. This is the meaning of first love for Christ.

In those days, I might have gone to Ephesus and asked, Why have you left Paul? The reply would most probably have been, 'Paul is too extreme, he insists on repentance, he insists on separation, he stands for the truth of the assembly and we are not prepared for that. We do not want to be restricted with him, we want to go on with the gospel'. But where was the gospel? It was not with those at Ephesus, it was with Paul. And it is still with Paul, and I am certain that no Christians who are not cleaving to Paul have the gospel of God, the whole gospel. Let us cleave to Paul and yet be urgent in season and out in preaching the word. Let us avail ourselves of every opportunity to preach Paul's gospel in the meeting rooms, in the open air, and to individuals.

My third point is, Where does the gospel lead? The last few verses of Romans make it clear where the gospel leads. "Now to Him that is able to establish you, according to my glad tidings and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, as to which silence has been kept in the times of the ages, but which has now been made manifest, and by prophetic scriptures, according to commandment of the eternal God, made known for obedience of faith to all the nations -- the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever. Amen". We cannot separate the gospel from the truth of the assembly, the mystery. The gospel is "according to the revelation of the mystery". This is supported by Colossians 1:23 - 25, where Paul says that he became minister of the glad tidings and that be became minister of the assembly. God had committed both ministries to him. It was really one ministry in two parts, and it was the ministry of the assembly that completed the word of God. The ministry of the gospel would thus have been incomplete without the ministry of the assembly.

Paul thus had two great ministries committed to him; but the basis of all was the full declaration of God by our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone could make God known and declare His Name. The minis-try of the gospel, committed in a special way to Paul, is to bring men into the gain of the declaration with the Lord has made, while the ministry of the assembly sets believers together as Christ's body and God's habitation, so that there might be a full response to God as thus declared. We can see thus how the ministry of the assembly completed the word of God. If we do not go on to the full thought of the assembly, God is deprived of His portion. We are saved through the gospel and brought into sonship in order that we might be brought into that one body, the assembly, in which there is to be glory to God unto all generations of the age of ages. The assembly is His sanctuary, His dwelling place, and that is the answer to the question, Where does the gospel lead to? Is it optional whether we should move on to the truth of the assembly? Look at the end of Romans. "the mystery ... according to commandment of the eternal God, made known for obedience of faith to all the nations", chapter 16:25 - 26. It is the commandment of the eternal God. The eternal God has commanded that the truth of the mystery should be made known for the obedience of faith to all the nations. In chapter 1 the gospel was for the obedience of faith among all nations, and the scope of the mystery is as wide as the scope of the gospel. Therefore everyone who receives the gospel is under command to obey the truth of the mystery. Have we obeyed this command? Are we going on to the great truth of the assembly, Christ's body, Christ's bride, God's tabernacle, God's house, God's sanctuary, where all that is due to Him in His house must be maintained? If not we are disobedient; this is strong language, but we are disobeying the command of the eternal God.

Someone may say, There are very few Christians who do it. That must not affect me. If I have an obedient heart I must go on with this even if I am alone. But usually the Lord does not leave us to walk alone; usually there are others to walk with, even if is only two or three. He says to such, "Where two or three are gathered together unto My name, there am I in the midst of them", Matthew 18:20. Gathering together unto the Lord's name means that I accept the truth of the gospel and recognize that it must not be separated from the truth of the assembly. I dishonour His name if I try to separate these two great ministries.

Let us take courage. Let us not be ashamed of the gospel of God. Let us encourage one another as Paul did Timothy: "Be not therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner; but suffer evil along with the glad tidings, according to the power of God", 2 Timothy 1:8.

Then at the end of the epistle comes an urgent request from the beloved captive in the Roman prison. "Use diligence to come to me quickly". Shall we give heed to this? Most have turned aside, but let us return to first love; let us be like the elders of Acts 20 who covered Paul with kisses. Let us take up our stand with him, prepared to be good soldiers of Jesus Christ. What a soldier Paul was! He says, "I am already being poured out, and the time of my release is come. I have combated the good combat, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith", 2 Timothy 4:6 - 7. We are called upon to combat the good combat, for the maintenance of the whole truth; we are called upon to run the race, the race from Egypt to Canaan; we are called upon to keep the whole Christian faith. Paul says, "I have kept the faith" -- the Christian faith in its entirety.

Beloved brethren, the gospel from that Roman prisoner has reached us in France; it has reached to England, to America, to the utmost parts of the world. Where is the gospel that was preached by those in Asia who had turned away? Forgotten. Paul's gospel goes on -- because it is God's gospel. See Paul in chapter 4:16 - 17, one man standing alone. "At my first defence no man stood with me ... But the Lord stood with me, and gave me power, that through me the proclamation might be fully made, and all those of the nations should hear". What an opportunity the Lord gave to His beloved prisoner to testify before the emperor and before a company which represented the whole empire of Rome! He will give us opportunities too in testimony. To the Philippians he says, "Ye have me in your hearts, and that both in my bonds and in the defence and confirmation of the glad tidings ye are all participators in my grace", 1:7. I trust these word will encourage our hearts. May the Lord help us all!

Marseille France, November 5, 1956 (from Words of Grace and Comfort, 1957, 33:125 - 33)

THE SHINING OF THE GREATEST LIGHT

In Acts 9 we have a light out of heaven: "there shone round about him (Paul) a light out of heaven", and this is the greatest light that has ever shone. We may say it is the greatest light that ever will shine for men; and men we need to remember -- that is, men in Christ -- are the most blest of any creatures. The Spirit of God would help us as to this greatest of all light, revealed to Paul. He says, "God ... was pleased to reveal His Son in me", Galatians 1:16; and "by revelation the mystery has been made known to me", Ephesians 3:3. Those two revelations constitute the greatest light that has ever come to men, and, if understood, they enable us to be in the assembly at the full level of intelligence and response that God desires.

In Revelation 3:1 - 6, the Lord says that He is the One who has the seven Spirits of God. That is, the fullness of the Spirit is available with a view to our going on to completion. Paul's ministry involves completion. If we do not go on in our souls and enter into this greatest of all lights, we shall never reach completion according to God. Sardis, which represents Protestantism, has never moved on to Paul's ministry of the assembly. Protestantism, as such, is ignorant of Paul's gospel and of Paul's intelligence in the mystery. Rome claims to be the assembly, but she is a complete travesty of it. Protestantism has never apprehended the assembly in any sense at all, and one reason why Protestantism has failed is because in her evangelical zeal she has allowed herself to become defiled. Therefore she has become dead; death and defilement go together. Defilement may spring from evangelical zeal, but in defiling ourselves we do it at the expense of our lives, we become dead as to the truth of the assembly and to all that is really living according to God. So the Lord is speaking to those who have not defiled their garments. If we are led away, even, as we may think, with the best motives, to defile our garments, as Protestantism has done, by using worldly means and methods in testimony, we are disqualified from moving on into this greatest light. We are disqualified from ever apprehending Paul's ministry. Such a course not only results in disqualification but will lead to moral death. But we will get help in pursuing the positive side. The seven Spirits of God suggest the full availability of the Spirit, so that we might, as giving Him His place, take in this greatest light and thus arrive at the complete thoughts of God.

Hornchurch

Hornchurch was Mr. Cowell's local meeting. (from Words of Truth, 1957, 25:32 - 33)

THE GITTITH PSALMS

Psalm 8, Psalm 81 and Psalm 84

These three psalms, dear brethren, are upon the same instrument, the Gittith, although different persons are using the instrument. Gittith is a word which come from the word 'Gath', which means vat or press. Goliath came from Gath and we know what pressure he brought upon the people of Israel. But what fruit came out of that pressure! It brought David to light and he became enshrined in the affections of Israel. They sang, "Saul hath smitten his thousands, and David his ten thousands", 1 Samuel 18:7. So the sweet Psalmist of Israel came to light at that time. It is the divine mind, that whatever pressure comes upon the saints should contribute to the high praises of God.

Later, in one of the moments of greatest pressure in his life, David wrote Psalm 56, a Michtam or golden Psalm, written when the Philistines took him in Gath. It is a remarkable psalm. To think that David, under pressure that he was then in, when he had to feign himself mad in the presence of Achish, King of Gath, could write a psalm like that! He did not wait until the pressure was over. He praised God in the pressure. This is what we need to learn. And so in that psalm he says, "In the day that I am afraid, I will confide in Thee. In God will I praise His word, in God I put my confidence: I will not fear; what can flesh do unto me?", Psalm 56:3 - 4. Think of David writing that in the terrible pressure he was in in Gath, the very home town of the giant he had slain. And he goes on to say, verse 8, "Thou countest my wanderings; put my tears into Thy bottle: are they not in Thy book?" How he learned the tenderness of God in time of pressure, the God who counted his wanderings. Surely he should never have fled to Gath even though Saul was seeking to kill him, but he says, "Thou countest my wanderings". God does not forsake His servant. "Put my tears into Thy bottle", he says. "Are they not in Thy book?" Think of God having a bottle and a book for the tears of the saints. I am sure there are some here tonight under pressure, but let me encourage you. David himself says, "In pressure Thou hast enlarged me", Psalm 4:1. And that golden psalm shows how he was enlarged in the very place of pressure where he might have been full of remorse. He fled to Gath again later and again he went through deep pressure, but he strengthened himself in his God. It was at the time he lost Ziklag and he wept until he could weep no more. We might think God would take no notice of tears when, in some degree, we are ourselves responsible for the pressure, but how tender God is! He strengthened himself in God and his faith became stronger in the pressure than it ever had been before. "I will not fear", he says, "What can flesh do unto me?"

But I want to speak of the experience of one greater than David. The word 'Gethsemane' comes from the same root as Gittith and Gath. There, all pressure, all possible pressure, was brought to bear on the perfect One -- One who was surrounded by enemies and yet was never in a false position. What a wonderful contemplation Gethsemane is! "Thou hast made Him a little lower than the angels", Psalm 8. It links with Hebrews 2:9, "Jesus, who was made some little inferior to angels on account of the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour". And it goes on to speak of Him tasting death for every thing. Further, it goes on to speak of the many sons being brought to glory, God having made the Leader of their salvation perfect through sufferings. We are allowed to contemplate those sufferings in Gethsemane. What they meant to His soul! He says, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death". He was going into the place of supreme pressure, pressure into which no creature could go. The experiences of David and all others sink into insignificance compared with the pressure into which Jesus went. It says, "He began to be sorrowful and deeply depressed". Think of that being said of Jesus -- deeply depressed. And yet in that pressure His perfection shines out in all its glory. "My Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from Me; but not as I will, but as Thou wilt". That word, "Thou wilt", refers to sovereign will, not often used in Scripture. It was a question of God's purpose. "In the volume of the book it is written of Me". He had come to do God's will. If we think of the supreme pressure that Christ went through, we can see that the eternal praise of God has come out of it. What immense results accrue from that pressure! "Thou art holy, Thou that dwellest amid the praises of Israel". God dwells amidst fragrant praise; and all has come to pass through the pressure Jesus went through.

Now I want to show how the pressure of Psalm 8 applies to our-selves. "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou established praise because of Thine adversaries, to still the enemy and the avenger", Psalm 8:2. This Psalm refers especially to the sufferings we come into on account of the testimony. "Jehovah our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth!" We are in the testimony. We are bearing witness to that excellent Name, the name which is above every name, the name of the One who has been through the depths. Because of the depths He has been through, He now has a name which is above every name, and in Him God has set His majesty above the heavens. God's majesty in its greatness and glory is now shining in Christ, the rights of His throne all upheld, and we are here to bear witness to it. In the coming day there will be a remnant at Jerusalem bearing witness to it amidst the greatest pressure.

There are two kinds of enemy as note 'y' New Translation: 1939; 'o' and 'p' in the 1961 edition. verse 2, indicates, "Thine adversaries". The internal enemy, the Antichrist of that day, and then the external enemy, "to still the enemy". What a crucible the remnant will be in, persecuted even unto death by the enemy within, the Antichrist, one of themselves, and persecuted from without by the Gentile power in league with the Antichrist. Not only that, but bearing the terrible disciplinary action of God from the desolator who passes through the land because of that dreadful combination between Rome and Jerusalem. Think of the tremendous pressure upon the remnant, and yet they will maintain the testimony for the glory of Christ's name. Now it is incumbent upon us to do that today, and it devolves upon young people, in a special way. "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou established praise". I know that we should all be marked by the spirit of the babe and the suckling. We would all desire this. Nevertheless, at the time the Lord quoted this passage in the gospel, just about a week before He died, there were the children in the temple saying, "Hosanna to the Son of David". The Lord was about to face the internal enemy, the chief priests and the scribes, those who should have recognized Him but who betrayed Him; and also the Gentile power. No doubt, the Lord felt the delivering up of Judas most, but it says that the chief priests and the scribes delivered Him up to Pilate, and Pilate delivered Him up to the will of the people. That was a night of delivering up. But, as the power of darkness was assembling its forces, there arose the note, "Hosanna to the Son of David". Virtually they were saying, in the language of the psalm, "Jehovah our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth!" It shows the importance of the young people, as well as the older ones, being in the service of praise. Alas, we have adversaries within, even among ourselves at times -- but then there is the great adversary within in Christendom, the Romish power, and there is the enemy without, communism, unionism. These enemies are all intent under Satan to crush the testimony.

What is God's answer? The Lord uses the word 'perfected'. "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings Thou hast perfected praise", Matthew 21:16. God's answer to the enemy is to perfect praise in the mouths of babes and sucklings. Men and women are to be marked by praise, but also young people. You may say, Why young people? Because young people are specially serviceable in the testimony. The eyes of the world are on the young. The world is content, to some extent, to let the older ones go. But what confounds the enemy, what silences him, so that he has nothing to say in the presence of it -- is to see boys and girls and young people growing up in wholehearted loyalty to Christ, bearing His name not only by word of mouth in testimony, but also in praise. Praise in many ways is the most powerful form of testimony. Another powerful form is preparedness to suffer and if we are in the spirit of praise we shall be prepared to suffer. There are the enemies. If we silence them in their opposition, they may use violence against us. We are to be prepared for that. It is all part of the testimony -- all part of the way God glorifies that glorious Name, that testimonial Name, the Name of Jesus. But it is well to remember that perhaps the most powerful form of testimony is God's name confessed in a sacrifice of praise. "By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise continually to God, that is, the fruit of the lips confessing his name", Hebrews 13:15. That means it is testimonial. You are thinking of God when you are praising, but the enemy listens to you. He cannot help it. I have heard one person after another, who have been affected by the truth, saying how they were impressed with the young people in the meeting, young people with heart and soul in the things of God. God did not commence this dispensation with twelve old men. He commenced it with twelve men in the prime of life. Similarly, in the previous dispensation, it was the youths of the children of Israel who first offered up bullocks as burnt offerings and peace offerings. God would bring forward young people in a right way because the eyes of the world are upon them. They are in the forefront, therefore. And the way God silences the enemy is by perfecting praise in the mouth of such. Satan is confounded and silenced when he sees young persons, in wholehearted devotion to Christ, engaged in praise. And we all need to be in it. It begins with sisters praising God in their homes. The greatest service of praise is at the Lord's Supper, and it may be if we are more and more vitally in it God will bring more and more persons in, to take account of God's name confessed in a sacrifice of praise, assembly-wise. Then we are to praise in all circumstances, as David did and Paul and Silas did. They carried their harps to prison with them. We should never leave our harps behind. And so when Mary comes to see Elizabeth, praise goes on. How good it would be if our neighbours heard praise in our households. However great the enemy's pressure is, God would answer it by so bringing us into things by the praise of His people.

I believe the idea of praise perfected is that, as the truth comes out, there is the appropriate answer in the saints. If the truth comes out as to the Spirit, there is the appropriate answer, not only among the older brethren but the young. If the truth as to God comes out there is the appropriate answer. Praise is perfected -- and that is how the testimony is carried forward. As one phase of it after another is brought out, there is a perfected answer, in the saints. There is something living there. It gives the lie to what the enemy says, that what has come out is not the truth, because there is the living evidence of it in praise. "The living, the living, he shall praise Thee", Isaiah 38:19. If the doctrine were false it would not bring life into the souls of the saints. It is a proof that the doctrine is right when praise is perfected, in the mouths of babes and sucklings.

Now I pass on to Psalm 81. It is by Asaph who was a very intelligent and feeling man. He went through pressure because of what he observed yet could not understand. A feeling man goes through pressure on account of such things. We all remember Psalm 73, "... until I went into the sanctuaries of God; then under-stood I their end". He had been through much pressure, much exercise as to the understanding of God's ways. But we understand the reason for these, even if we cannot understand the detail of them, in the sanctuaries. The whole system is instructive. The altars, the holy place and the holiest, all are instructive as to what God is aiming at in His ways, the detail of which may seem inexplicable. He is working to bring us into accord with the brazen altar, the laver, the golden altar, the shewbread on the table and the boards, and if we understand that, we can see the necessity for His ways though we cannot explain the detail. In this psalm Asaph is thinking over the history of Israel, entering into the feelings of God about it. It is like a man going over church history. How God feels church history! "Oh that my people had hearkened unto me, that Israel had walked in my ways!" This is not reading a book on church history for the Bible gives us enough as to church history to produce in us right feelings with God about it. We have the types too. All these things are to help us to understand what God has borne with and the intense grief of His heart! "Oh that my people had hearkened unto me!" What He would have done! Asaph feels this. That is the way of recovery in a day like this. The men who led in the recovery were really Asaphs. They wanted to understand the reason for the state of Christendom, and to learn God's original thoughts. As they entered into them they entered into the dreadfulness of the departure and began to feel with God about it. If we have feelings like this, from out of that very pressure we shall get a remarkable appreciation of God. In Psalm 8 we find a remarkable appreciation of the excellence of that Name and of His majesty placed above the heavens. That is what strengthens us in testimony. Psalm 81 begins, "Sing ye joyously unto God our strength, shout aloud unto the God of Jacob". What we discover if we have been with God and felt with Him about church history is that everything He established at the beginning, every privilege, is available to the saints at the end. So out of the depths of this form of pressure you again have praise. All pressure is intended to lead to praise, whatever form it takes. We have our part in the ruin and can say we have sinned against God, but we can confess our sins and the sins of the people as Daniel did, and as we do so, and are with God in it, we discover that God is unchanged and that He is the strength of His people today as much as He was at the beginning. In fact, the very day of weakness enhances what God is to His people. "Sing ye joyously unto God our strength, shout aloud unto the God of Jacob". We can bring in, not only the Gittith, but instruments of joy. "Raise a song, and sound the tambour, the pleasant harp with the lute. Blow the trumpet at the new moon, at the set time, on our feast day: For this is a statute for Israel". We go back to all the statutes and we find they all still stand. We can blow the trumpet of victory even in this day in which we live. Our great feast day is restored to us, the Lord's Day, and the Lord's Supper, the great set feast. We have it in a way, undoubtedly, which has never been known since apostolic times. There is a joy among the saints today, who feel things with God, that may, in some way, be greater than at any time in church history. Every statute He made for His people at the beginning is still available. We can have our holy convocations, we have the Lord's Supper, the set feast; we have the new moons, as it were, the various phases of the truth as they come out, each yielding its own quota of praise to God. So one would encourage us all, dear brethren, not only to be like David, who wrote Psalm 8 and who knew such pressure, but also to be Asaphs, feeling things intelligently with God, in such a manner that we prove in our souls that He is as much our strength at the close of the dispensation as He was at the beginning. He has never changed. He is all that He ever was, and every privilege that He designed for His people at the beginning is available at the end, though in outward obscurity.

Now I turn to Psalm 84. We have here the sons of Korah. They had known sorrow. They would never forget their father's part in the great rebellion. Numbers is a great book for learning what God has borne with and what He has had to deal with amongst His people. But there are two particular forms of pressure in this Psalm. One arises from loving God in such a manner that your soul longs, yea even faints for the courts of Jehovah. "My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God". We have thought of a soul discovering that God is what He ever was to His people and singing joyously to God his strength. But here we have a soul enrapt with God, that his one desire is to dwell with God. One cannot express how much God values longings of soul like this. "My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of Jehovah". God is so precious to you that you want to be with Him in His surroundings. His dwelling place is your home. You know no other home, in the proper sense of the word. If this were true of us, at every opportunity we would enter the holiest. We would enter those courts, and for us it mean entering the very presence of God, the holiest of all. Of course what we enjoy individually is much enhanced assembly-wise. So, after speaking of entering the holiest, the writer of Hebrews says, "Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together", 10:25. It could not be! If we enter the holiest at every opportunity day by day -- if that is our habitual resort -- we shall never forsake the assembling of ourselves together, for there we experience the presence of God and tread His courts in the most blessed way. Our soul would be longing for every assembling. Now for such an one reproach comes, because you cannot have these feelings and longings without being known as a sparrow and a swallow. If all your longings are in this direction and your home is where God dwells, men will regard you as worthless. There will be nothing about you that fits in with their system. You will be here as one who belongs to the holy of holies and that will not suit the world at all. The Lord Jesus speaks of Himself as the sparrow alone upon the housetop [Psalm 102:7]; and the swallow is a bird of passage. We are just strangers and sojourners here. This is the true character of the saints, but it comes into evidence in those who can use the language of this psalm, "My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of Jehovah; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God". Such a man is but a sparrow here, and that is a reproach among men. Such a man is but a bird of passage. Abraham never ceased to be that. Even when he had become a wealthy man the king recognized that he was till a sojourner; Genesis 21:23. Even wealthy people can be in the gain of this. God chooses to make some of His people wealthy for the sake of the saints and the testimony. And it is remarkable that even a man who has worldly substance can be known, among those he has to move with in the world, as a sojourner. Abraham was known like that. This is how we should be known by men around. These are the features they should see, the features of a sparrow and a swallow. And so it says, "The sparrow hath found a house". Where can the sparrow live but in the house of God? He is of no account in this world, but there is a place where he is of account -- in the house of God. "The sparrow hath found a house". Many young people go house-hunting, and God needs households, believing households, in relation to His testimony. But let me say to you, young person, while God grants you a house here, let your true home be the house of God. Let His presence be your home. "The sparrow hath found a house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she layeth her young". You desire a nice house for your children; but be sure to bring your children to the altars of God. That is where you are to have your nest. Do not make your home a nest for your children, where they will just settle down to natural things. The true nesting place is not your home. That is good in its way, but the real nesting place for the young is God's altars. "Thine altars, O Jehovah of hosts, my King and my God". So that you bring the young people to the centre of the system. What a place to nest! We can expect results among the young people then. For ourselves we serve at the altars as knowing our place in the holiest. Christ's service has made the way for us to go into the holiest, not our service. Our privilege is to go right in, and thus as having been at the centre, we can have God's outlook, His universal outlook, and we need to nest our young there. In our homes, if our prayers centre around ourselves and our houses and our children, that is not nesting our young people at God's altars. Even in our household prayers we are priests. Our houses are priestly houses. The aim should be, as having been in the holiest and thus acquiring God's outlook on all saints, and all men and kings and all in dignity, to function at His altars. We have our household altar; we have our personal altar; but the thing to begin with is God's presence and then God's altars, and to have our children with us in it. It does not take a long time to do these things. It is not a question of the time we give to it, so much as the fact we do it. You can understand such young people becoming assembly persons early. They have been used to the universal outlook, God's own outlook on things, in the morning and evening prayers at home. They have been at God's altars there. They love to be at the meetings because there we touch the altars of God in the fullest way. And so he goes on, "Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house". That is the point I am getting at. Are you a dweller there or do you just go occasionally? Are you just a visitor? Are you living in your own home and just a visitor in God's house? Or are you dwelling in God's house? God wants you to dwell there. He loves you. It rejoices His heart to see you come into His courts, and it should rejoice your heart. His joy is filled full, as He sees the answering response in us. You say, 'Well, I do enter into it when I go to the meetings'. That is not good enough. We need to enter into the presence of God day by day. You will value the meetings more than you ever did, and they will mean more to you, if you are a dweller in God's house. As for your own house, it is a tent. You are a pilgrim and sojourner. You are thankful for the mercy, but you hold it in relation to God's house. And he says, "they will be constantly praising Thee".

The second form of pressure in Psalm 84 is what falls upon those in whose hearts are the highways. "Blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee, -- they, in whose heart are the highways". If we value the house of God, we shall want to maintain the law of the house. The law of the house is a very extensive matter. It is summarized in Ezekiel 43:12; "all its border round about is most holy", but it is given in great detail in the Pentateuch, as well as in the New Testament. The highways referred to are the highways that lead to Zion, the great highways of the Lord's commandments. Three times in the year all the males were to appear before God and they went on those highways to Zion. It is a question of having the highways of divine principles in our hearts, and if so, we shall come into pressure, because these principles are such that the flesh cannot be tolerated. Alas! not all believers have these longings for God. Not all believers are finding their dwelling in His house. Therefore, not all believers cherish the law of the house, and so those in whose heart are the highways have to pass through the valley of weeping. But "passing through the valley of Baca (or weeping), they make it a well-spring; yea, the early rain covereth it with blessings. They go from strength to strength". So there is nothing to fear about this kind of pressure. God is with you in it, and you are with God. Your strength is in Him and you go from strength to strength, and each one appears before God in Zion. As moving together in these highways, we arrive at the full purpose of God. We arrive at the full truth of Paul's ministry.

Well, all this should encourage us to accept the pressure. So the psalm ends, "Jehovah of hosts, blessed is the man that confideth in Thee!" One has noted the brevity of that prayer in verses 8 and 9. "Jehovah, God of hosts, hear my prayer; give ear, O God of Jacob". The prayer is one verse. "Behold, O God our shield, and look upon the face of Thine anointed". Not a long prayer about his own needs! He is not thinking of them at all. He knows the presence of God and what it is to be in the presence of God's anointed. He says, "Behold, O God our shield, and look upon the face of Thine anointed". We need to look upon the face of God's anointed. Our prayers then will centre in Him and what God is doing through Him. May God help us as to these few thoughts in view of the link between these psalms, all played on the Gittith -- all psalms which show how great are the results of pressure, when we go through it with God.

Staten Island, N.Y., November 6, 1957 (from Notes of Readings in New York and Other Ministry, 1959, 28:197 - 212)

SEPARATED FROM EVIL AND SEPARATED TO GOD

Numbers 19:1 - 6,9,17 - 20; Numbers 6:1 - 6; 2 Corinthians 6:14 (first clause),16 - 18; 2 Corinthians 7:1; Nehemiah 12:27,31,36 (latter part: "with ... them")-40,43

I wish to say a word, dear brethren, on separation from evil, and separation to God. Numbers 19 deals with separation from evil and Numbers 6 with separation to God. The words 'consecrate' and 'separate' in Numbers 6 are the same in the original; it is a question of a person making a vow to separate himself to God. The great principle of separation is fundamental in God's relations with man and man's relations with God at the present time. It came specifically into view when idolatry had established itself in the post-diluvian world, man becoming his own object and his own centre, to make a name for himself. It was then that the God of glory appeared to our father Abraham. He said to him, "Go out of thy land, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, to the land that I will shew thee". Thus the great principle of separation was introduced in relation to the one who is the father of us all; and when he was called, he obeyed.

I think we can see that in Abraham's case there was not only separation from evil, but also separation to God; separation to God in such a manner that, when he was tried, he did not hesitate to offer up the supreme object of his affections on earth. God was everything to Abraham, more than anything He had given him. How easily we make idols of what God has given us! We may make idols of our ability, our skill, our natural relations, our work, our houses. God gives us things; what a recompense it is when we allow such things to come between our souls and Him! That was not so with Abraham. Separated from evil, he was separated to God; God completely commanded his affections. Thus when the word came, "Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, Isaac ... and there offer him up for a burnt-offering on one of the mountains which I will tell thee of", he rose early in the morning to do it. No wonder he was called the friend of God! God can trust a man like that with His greatest secrets. One of the greatest privileges a human being can know is to be trusted by God with His secrets.

In Numbers, Balaam remarks as to Israel, "it is a people that shall dwell alone and shall not be reckoned among the nations", Numbers 23:9. You see how this principle is carried forward. Why were the people to dwell alone? Because they were dwelling with God, and God with them. So that while the Nazarite's vow is called a special one, God looked for it amongst His people. He looked for those who would not only be separate from evil, but be separated to Himself -- He Himself everything to them. In his epistle, John speaks of our dwelling in God, and God in us. If that is true of us, dear brethren, as dwelling in love, how could we do other than dwell alone? If we are dwelling in God, and God in us, what part can the world have with us? How separated we shall be! Such people must dwell alone, as far as the world is concerned. And so the word to the Corinthians is "Ye are the living God's temple; according as God has said, I will dwell among them, and walk among them", 2 Corinthians 6:16. God is the living God, and He is the loving God, and nothing will satisfy Him but full-hearted responsive love from His people. He is a jealous God, because He is love. Think of a God who loves so much that He has come forth from His own place of separatedness where He ever dwells in unapproachable light, and has made Himself known in order to dwell among men responsive to Himself. He has not chosen to dwell among angels, but among men. How it should move our affections toward Him! Furthermore, He has not waited for the eternal state, a perfect condition, but has come down to dwell among us now. "I will dwell among them, and walk among them" is the present position, the wilderness position. The temple in Corinthians is the temple of the tabernacle (see 1 Samuel 1:9; 1 Samuel 3:3, and Revelation 15:5). We are the very shrine of God. What can we have any more to do with idols? How can we have to do with anything that is contrary to God when we realize that the great, the glorious, the eternal God has come forth in love to dwell among us now? He had come to dwell among His people in such a city as Corinth, and, in spite of their state, He had not left them. Their state prevented their enjoyment of His presence, and prevented His enjoyment of them; but He had not left them. "I will dwell among them, and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they shall be to me a people". That is the basis of His appeal. "Wherefore come out from the midst of them, and be separated, saith the Lord". It is His own appeal to our hearts at this time, to be separated from evil, separated to Him, and wholly for Him.

"And touch not what is unclean, and I will receive you". He is longing to receive us in the sense referred to here. And we need fear nothing, because it is the Almighty God who is calling us out; a God whose almightiness we have to learn first, if we are truly to apprehend it, in ourselves as Abraham did. The disclosure of the Almighty God to Abraham related to what Abraham was going to experience in his own body. And we learnt the almightiness of God, if we learn it effectively, through the power of the Spirit in ourselves, the almighty power of God in the Spirit. And if we have learned it that way, we shall have no fear as regards circumstances. I am not suggesting at all that I am in the gain of this as I ought to be, but I can see that, if we have learned the almightiness of God in dealing with the greatest mountain of difficulty that could face us, sin in the flesh, then it will be simple to trust God as regards circumstances. Abraham learnt the almighty power of God in himself, in a physical sense; we learn it in a spiritual sense.

And so this appeal comes to us, and I want to reinforce the appeal by referring to Numbers 19. We have referred in these meetings, to the cross, and how God's wrath from heaven was revealed there against sin in its totality; and this passage, one of the most solemn in Scripture, indicates to us what that day of greatest sorrow, that day of unfathomed grief, meant for Christ; "when Thou didst taste the horror of wrath without relief". No. 190 by J.N.D., in the 1973 Hymn Book re-selection. I do not think any burning in Scripture is depicted like this one. It says, "one shall burn the heifer before his eyes; its skin and its flesh, and its blood, with its dung, shall he burn", (verse 5). What a burning! All that God is against sin fell upon the Lord Jesus. God made Him to be sin for us; where should we be otherwise? What a burning! And this is to be before our eyes. Paul put it before the Galatians' eyes. He said, "to whom, as before your very eyes, Jesus Christ has been portrayed, crucified among you", Galatians 3:1. We need to consider the cross. If we pass by judgment, we pass by the love of God, as the Lord says. We learn the love God in the way He has met this terrible matter of sin, and in the awful sufferings Christ has passed through. Christ was the greatest Sufferer; but how deep the Father's anguish, and the Spirit's feelings, too.

We may sometimes overlook a little phrase in Hebrews 9:13. "The blood of bulls and of goats", would refer to the day of atonement; but it adds, "and a heifer's ashes sprinkling the defiled". Do not let us ignore that little phrase "a heifer's ashes sprinkling the defiled". We should have no access to God, indeed we could not even approach the tent of meeting, without the death of Christ in this character. The blood of the red heifer was sprinkled seven times before the tent of meeting. It is a type which depicts the death of Christ from our side, what He suffered for us, for our purification. The day of atonement, although it is the basis of all blessing, emphasizes what He suffered for God, and what the blood is for God. But this type emphasizes what He suffered for us. It should greatly touch our hearts to think that we could have no part in the worship of the living God, no part, indeed, in the Christian system at all, but for the "heifer's ashes sprinkling the defiled". The thought of the ashes should affect us profoundly. The Lord Jesus said in Spirit in Psalm 22:15, "Thou hast laid me in the dust of death". He has been into the dust of death for us. "Dust thou art; and unto dust shalt thou return", Genesis 3:19. He has been into the grave. But the ashes refer to what transpired before that, in those three hours of darkness when, for us, He endured and exhausted the wrath of God. The ashes are the witness that the all-consuming judgment of God on sin in the flesh has been borne. Our true place, therefore, is in dust and ashes in repentance before God. The water of separation (note the word 'separation') was made from those ashes. It was a purification for sin; Numbers 19:9. It was thus that the heifer's ashes were sprinkled upon the defiled. The sprinkling is to bring home to us the true force of this aspect of the death of Christ and the awfulness of it, that it might move our souls. God made His soul an offering for sin, and it should move our souls, so that we shall say, "What have I to do any more with idols?", Hosea 14:8; what have I to do any more with the unclean thing?

And so it goes on to speak of one who touches a dead person, any dead body of a man (verse 11). We have each and all touched the dead body of a man, we have each been identified with what we are after the flesh, "this body of death", Romans 7:24. Nothing that we could do would have delivered us from it, the dead body of a man. Jesus has laid the basis for our deliverance by bearing all the judgment Himself. Nothing is left, as it were, before God, of the man so offensive to God (and now, through grace, so offensive to us) but the ashes. "Who shall deliver me out of this body of death?" The ashes are the witness to our deliverance at such a cost. We are no longer identified with sin in the flesh in the mind of God, but with Him who took our place, and has been raised. But then the sprinkling means that the force of that is brought home to me, so that I no longer identify myself with it. That is the lesson of Romans 7. "It is no longer I that do it", Romans 7:17. I see what a deliverance has been wrought, and the heifer's ashes sprinkled on me mean that I can take my stand apart from that body of death. It is no longer I that do it, but the sin that dwells in me; and I am purified from sin through the death of Christ -- the heifer's ashes sprinkling the defiled. I can say that I delight in the law of God after the inward man and that I myself serve the law of God. Romans, chapter 8, shows how the Spirit makes the deliverance effective. According to Numbers 19:17, "they shall take ... of the ashes of the purification-offering that hath been burned, and shall put running water thereon in a vessel". The running water speaks of the Holy Spirit given, on the very basis of these sufferings of Christ, so that we may be in practical deliverance from this body of death. "If Christ be in you, the body is dead on account of sin, but the Spirit life on account of righteousness", Romans 8:10. You say, 'Alas! how often I give way to sin in the flesh'. Well, the ashes are always available. The water of purification was applied to you once, in the fullest way from God's standpoint, when you were converted; so that the thing stands from the divine side; but in your experience you may need it renewed. Who of us does not need continually to come back to the force of these heifer's ashes sprinkling the defiled, which is the basis of our deliverance from the dead body of a man? So that it is one thing to say "this body of death", and another thing to say the body is dead. If the body is dead, we are delivered practically, in the power of the Spirit. The body is dead, because of sin, and the Spirit is life; and if the Spirit is life, it means that we can present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. As far as sin goes, the body is dead; but as far as its activities go, the Spirit is life. That is a primary application of the teaching of Numbers 19, but it is not the whole matter.

The word in 2 Corinthians 6:17 is, "touch not what is unclean". I have to see I do not touch the unclean thing in myself; if I do, I have to learn to judge myself, which would imply getting back to the meaning of these ashes and purifying myself accordingly. But I am also not to touch the unclean thing around. You will notice that it says of the heifer, in verse 2, "a red heifer without blemish, wherein is no defect, and upon which never came yoke". Was Christ ever yoked with the world? Not at all. 2 Corinthians 6 has to do with yokes. "Be not diversely yoked with unbelievers". It bears on this type of the death of Christ, the red heifer. Upon Him never came yoke. He was wholly for God, as we know, from the womb; and separated to God, the great Nazarite of God; separated from evil, of course; we do not need to say such a thing as that; but separated to God. And so it raises the whole question of yokes. We have all been under yokes, but God has called us out, "Come out from the midst of them, and be separated, saith the Lord, and touch not what is unclean". Now I want to raise the question of dead bodies; not our own now, not the one we carry about with us, but the corporate bodies of men around us. Anything morally dead is unclean in the sight of God, and any corporate association of men that has not God as its centre, is a dead body. There is no life there, corporately, towards God. Any individual, or any body of men, where there is no life towards God, is unclean, and if you touch such, you become defiled. It is not only that the person touching the dead body is defiled but, what is far more serious, if he fails to purify himself, he defiles the sanctuary of Jehovah (verse 20). Touching, in this sense, involves identification with the dead thing.

But the water of separation is available and we would like, at a time like this, to sprinkle these ashes on one another, that is, to bring this aspect of the death of Christ home to the conscience and heart, so that we purify ourselves from the unclean thing; we refuse to be linked with anything that is dead, where there is no life God-ward. In actual fact, there is only one fellowship of life in this world, only one fellowship that God recognizes, the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. That is the position that we need to face, without discrimination as to the character of the association, wherever a diverse yoke is really involved. The point is, if God is not the centre, it is dead. And, because God is not the centre, you will find a good deal of cedar-wood and hyssop and scarlet, all of which according to this chapter, went into the burning. "And the priest shall take cedar-wood, and hyssop, and scarlet, and cast them into the midst of the burning of the heifer". You may say, 'This association is not like a trade union'. That may be so. But if you examine it you will find that, whatever its ostensible purpose, it does, in a greater or lesser degree, glorify man in the flesh. The cedar-wood of man's greatness, the hyssop of his false humility, the scarlet of his glory, while seen in their most offensive character in what is religious, also characterizes men's associations and their literature generally. But all has gone into the burning; all has come under judgment in the death of Christ. When the wrath of God was revealed from heaven, and sin in its totality judged, everything morally dead was judged.

Now I wish to go on to Nehemiah, because it speaks there about the dedication of the wall. It is dealing with days of recovery and a good deal had preceded. God raised up Cyrus, His beloved, His servant, His shepherd, who opened the door for the remnant to return to Jerusalem, and they went up under Joshua and Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel meaning 'born in Babylon'. The first thing they did was to build the altar, and to keep the feast of tabernacles. That bears on the heavenly side of things and that is how the present revival began. It began with light as to Christ as Head in heaven, as to His body here on earth, and as to the presence of the Holy Spirit. It was the feast of tabernacles in principle, the top-note. That is what brought people out into separation. The altar was set up, the Lord's Supper recognized, and the service of God begun. That start of things, according to the book of Ezra was remarkable. The returned captives must have studied the Scriptures closely, because it says they offered daily burnt-offerings by number at the feast of tabernacles, according to the ordinance, as the duty of every day required; Ezra 3:4. It means they knew Numbers 29. Later, when the foundation of the temple was laid (3:10), they instituted the service of song according to the directions of David, king of Israel, they were governed by the light given to Moses and to David. And that has been a feature of the present revival -- the knowledge of the Scriptures and of the whole truth bearing on matters. And it says, when the foundation of the house was laid, the people shouted and "the noise was heard afar off". Later the house was finished, and they kept the dedication of the house with joy. Many years later, Ezra came up bringing more treasure and more vessels, to beautify the house. Finally Nehemiah came up to rebuild the city, and its wall, and chapter 12 records the culmination, namely, the dedication of the wall.

I believe, dear brethren, this specially links with the present time. What the Spirit of God would stress now, the dedication of the wall. There has been much building of the wall. When Nehemiah first went round, the wall was in ruins, and if the wall is in ruins, Christians are in reproach, as it says (2:17), "I said to them, Ye see the distress that we are in, that Jerusalem lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire. Come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach". If you have not got the wall, you will escape the reproach of Christ, but you will be in great reproach. I would rather have the reproach of Christ than be in reproach amongst men in the sense this means, that you are despised. Men do not object to the open principle, they will go on with those who hold it and, thus, the reproach of Christ is avoided. Nevertheless men realize that it is compromise. They have an impression of what Christianity ought to be. Christianity involves the reproach of Christ, and if we try to escape it, we become despised by the very people whose reproach we are seeking to avoid. But then, as this book proceeds, the wall is rebuilt against much opposition. There will always be opposition to the building of the wall. But finally it says, in chapter 6:15, "So the wall was finished", and in verse 1 of that chapter, the "enemies, heard that I had built the wall, and that there was no breach left in it". Now what about the wall today? Is there a breach left in it? This is the time for seeing that there is no breach left in the wall. The time came when Nehemiah said that the enemies heard that there is no breach left in it. If we have not got a wall, there can be no administration. Gates are of no use without a wall. Once you have the wall, you can have gates and true administration. The wall is very attractive, do not think I am saying anything that is not attractive. It is said of the Holy City, that the building of its wall was jasper, and the foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every precious stone. What a wonderful structure the wall is! Why should we be ashamed of it? And so, if the wall is there, the gates can function, each gate a pearl. The gates of the city according to Revelation 21:25 shall not be shut at all by day, for night shall not be there. Yet nothing unclean is allowed into the city. That is the idea of administration. The gates are open to receive all that is of God, all that should come into the city, but nothing common nor that maketh an abomination and a lie, shall at all enter into it. There we have true administration.

In Nehemiah 12, when the wall was completed and the gates were erected, there was the dedication of the wall. It was the culmination of joy. The name Ezra means 'help', but the name Nehemiah mean 'comfort of Jehovah'. There is no real comfort for the saints until the wall is there without a breach. The city of God is a wonderful, inclusive conception. Among nations of men the metropolitan city contains all that is most precious, both to the king and the nation. In the city of God everything most precious to God, and to the people of God, is conserved. But we must have a wall to protect it. There can be no comfort if you feel it is exposed. And so the dedication of the wall became the crowning joy of the recovery. It is not simply the shout was heard afar off, but it says, "the joy of Jerusalem was heard even afar off". God would bring us to this joy, dear brethren.

Now I want to say a word about dedication. There was the dedication of the house earlier (Ezra 6:16), and now the dedication of the wall. For us it means that we dedicate ourselves. "Whose house are we". The dedication of the house of God means that we are dedicated to God; and likewise, the dedication of the wall, because the wall is in the saints. The wall today is not a material structure. The dedication of the wall means that I am dedicated, we are all dedicated. Let us be in this dedication. And that corresponds with the vow of the Nazarite, not only separation from evil, but separation to God. We recognize that we belong to the house -- "whose house are we" -- and that we also form the wall of the city, and we dedicate ourselves accordingly. In the recovery, every person who is vitally in it, is a Nazarite. Indeed in Christianity, what was special of old is normal; Nazariteship is normal. The joy expressed on those occasions of dedication shows the principle of the Nazarite's vow operated in that day of recovery of old, because they were not relying on any natural joy, or earthly prosperity, for stimulation. Their joy was entirely related to God, and His house, and His city. That is the idea of a Nazarite. It is not only that he does not touch a dead body, but he separates himself from wine and strong drink. He will not allow anything natural to be his stimulation. God is the source of his joy. The God of the gladness of my joy, the Psalmist says; Psalm 43:4. And that is what marked these returned captives. May the spirit of the Nazarite mark us! Let us ask ourselves, dear brethren, what is keeping us going? Is it some new foible down here? Do we need such things to keep us going? Or is it God our exceeding joy? If so there will be no difficulty about the wall. It will be a great joy to us to be in the dedication.

And see how remarkable are the movements of the two choirs upon the wall! Without the wall we could never maintain the service of God; it is impossible. "Great is Jehovah, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the hill of his holiness", Psalm 48:1. But you must have the wall. And so, at the dedication of the wall, what service there was -- these two great choirs! The first one, with Ezra in front, had the musical instruments of David the man of God. They started at the dung gate, because that is where we must start if we are to fulfil our part in the service of God. "Let a man prove himself, and thus eat of the bread, and drink of the cup", 1 Corinthians 11:28. We start at the dung gate. But it goes on to say (verse 37), "at the fountain-gate, and over against them, they went up by the stairs of the city of David". In chapter 3:15 it speaks of the stairs that go down from the city of David, but now the time comes for going up those stairs "at the ascent of the wall, above the house of David, even to the water-gate eastward" -- suggesting the service of God in full activity, leading to the outflow of ministry and an outlook towards the Lord's coming. The second choir, in the opposite direction, with Nehemiah behind them, began at the tower of the furnaces, where all the rubbish was burnt. There is a lot of rubbish to burn in days of recovery; we have got to get rid of all the wrong ideas and the tower of the furnaces is available. Then the broad wall, suggesting the scope of the truth; the gate of Ephraim, fruitfulness; and the gate of the old wall, divine principles, going back to the beginning. Then the fish-gate, the tower on Hananeel, and the tower of Meah, even to the sheep-gate; "and they stood still in the prison-gate". Until you have got the wall you cannot exercise discipline, but now there is the prison-gate. Sanctions are available to maintain what is due to God. Thus the first choir is the upward line -- the service Godward -- and the second choir is the administration manward, the fish-gate, the sheep-gate, the prison-gate. And both choirs stood in the house of God. "And that day they offered great sacrifices, and rejoiced: for God had made them rejoice with great joy; and also the women and the children rejoiced. And the joy of Jerusalem was heard even afar off". What a day, dear brethren! And this is what God would bring us to now. This is the point in the great the recovery at which God would have us arrive now.

You may say, 'If I accept separation in the way you are speaking, my wife and children will suffer'. But the wives and the children were in this, the women and children rejoiced. We were much affected recently to meet a brother with a wife and young children, suffering, having lost his work through trade unionism. They were having to sell their home and we were greatly touched to see the attitude of the wife, the way she supported and encouraged her husband. In spite of all the pressure, they were experiencing something of this joy. "The women and the children rejoiced. And the joy of Jerusalem was heard even afar off".

Now I want to say one more word. The second choir was going over the ground of administration manward, ending at the prison-gate; but it speaks of the tower of Hananeel, and Hananeel means 'God is gracious'. We want the breaches in the wall closed, but, let me say a word to the brethren as to the spirit in which we endeavour to do it. It is greatly affecting to see Paul's spirit in these matters. The Corinthians were in a bad state; how does he address them? In the first epistle he says, "Wherefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry". Idolatry is a dreadful thing. Every association which has not God as its centre is, in principle, idolatrous. But how does he approach them? My beloved, he says. This is the way to approach our brethren. We need patience and much love. God is gracious. The tower of Hananeel is there before the prison-gate. And so let us make love's appeal to one another, "Wherefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry", 1 Corinthians 10:14. And in the second epistle he says, "Having therefore these promises, beloved, let us purify ourselves from every pollution of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in God's fear", 2 Corinthians 7:1. Let us know how to appeal to one another as 'beloved'. Love would not lose one person through lack of patience and care. In the representation of God in the living creatures in Ezekiel 1:10, we have the lion, and the lion roars sometimes as the prophet Amos indicates. Paul speaks somewhat like a lion at the end of this epistle. He says, "I have declared beforehand, and I say beforehand as present the second time, and now absent ... that if I come again I will not spare", 2 Corinthians 13:2. But he is not speaking thus in the meantime; he is entreating by the meekness and the gentleness of the Christ; 2 Corinthians 1:10. There is the face of a man, "the likeness of their faces was the face of a man", Ezekiel 1:10. "Now I shall most gladly spend and be utterly spent for your souls, if even in abundantly loving you I should be less loved", 2 Corinthians 12:15. What a man Paul was, the face of a man in Paul -- the face of Jesus! And then the face of the ox, suggesting patience; love has long patience, is kind. When the time comes the lion roars; but do not let us roar before the time. And when the time comes the eagle swoops. But let us rightly represent God in all these exercises. Otherwise, in our very effort to get things done, we shall lose divine support; we shall allow, in another form, the very man we are seeking to exclude. I just say that, dear brethren, that we might imbibe the spirit of Paul, in the way we apply the truth. Even as to the work of the Lord, in which the Corinthians were very remiss, he said, "So then, my beloved brethren, be firm, immovable, abounding always in the work of the Lord", 1 Corinthians 15:58. Let us learn how to appeal to one another on these lines. Should love's appeal fail, and the sanctity of God's house and His city be involved, there are the sanctions; they stood still over the prison-gate. But may the Lord help us, so that love's appeal -- God's own appeal (2 Corinthians 6:17) may be heeded.

More could be said as to the great heights to which the note of praise rose, once the wall was completed. "Bless Jehovah your God from eternity to eternity. And let men bless the name of Thy glory, which is exalted above all blessing and praise. Thou art the Same, Thou alone, Jehovah", Nehemiah 9:5 - 6. What a marvellous note of praise was reached! The title 'El' is also brought in (Nehemiah 9:31 - 32). "El" refers to God in His strength, not only physical, but in the strength and unchangeability of His nature and character. God never changes. His attitude to sin never changes. The returned captives come to a very distinct appreciation of El, the unchanging God, who never deviates, never lowers the standard, and yet, would, so long as it is right to do so, wait upon us in patient grace. But I believe the time has now come for us all to be concerned to fill up all the breaches and to dedicate the wall.

May the Lord help us for His name's sake.

London, July 16, 1958
Mr. Cowell gave this address at the London Special Meetings with Stanley McCallum in 1958. It was included in the now out-of-print Stow Hill Depot publication, of notes of those meetings, entitled Distinctiveness And Finality In Paul's Ministry (see pages 168 - 83).