E J McBRIDE
Acts 2:30 - 36; Genesis 3:9 - 14; Genesis 5:21 - 24; Genesis 18:1 - 6; Genesis 32:22 - 24; Isaiah 63:7, 8
I desire to draw attention to the Lord's own words in the address to Smyrna, when He said, "I know ... the railing of those who say that they themselves are Jews, and are not, but a synagogue of Satan" (Revelation 2:9), and to show how the Lord secures now the whole house of Israel in those who know what it is to be Jews in truth. My object in reading these scriptures is to make clear what it is to be a Jew inwardly, as the apostle speaks.
It is often said of the saints, and no doubt it is true, that as to the truth, their eyes are in advance of their feet. It is a true saying that 'the eyes see farther than the feet go', but the divine intent is that our spiritual understanding should be commensurate with our intelligence. We have much light as to God's thoughts, but we often lack in being the expression of this light in ourselves, hence our public movements are oftentimes not in accord with the light. So in discipline the Lord sees fit betimes to restrain our activities in moving outwardly, by allowing circumstances to come in which hinder.
Now as to the subject before us, some may say we are not Jews, but I claim to speak of it in relation to ourselves on account of what we get in Galatians and in Romans: "Know then that they that are on the principle of faith,
these are Abraham's sons" (Galatians 3:7), and again, "And as many as shall walk by this rule, peace upon them and mercy, and upon the Israel of God" (Galatians 6:16). "For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, neither that circumcision which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is so inwardly; and circumcision, of the heart, in spirit, not in letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God" (Romans 2:28, 29).
Now I desire to refer to four men, as giving us, I believe, the features of the true Jew - Adam, Enoch, Abraham and Jacob. In the two former you have the divine side, seen objectively, and in the two latter the practical side, seen subjectively. The voice to Adam revealed his failure in headship. God said, "Where art thou"? He had failed to control the woman - to keep his wife near him - thus she came under the influence of Satan. In spite of his wonderful intelligence in naming all the animals, he allowed her to go astray, and not only failed to maintain his influence over her, but came himself through weakness by his affections under her influence in eating the fruit of the forbidden tree. What a contrast this presents to Christ as Head of the assembly. There is no sign of this in the assembly, as under Christ, the last Adam, who "loved the assembly, and has delivered himself up for it, in order that he might sanctify it, purifying it by the washing of water by the word, that he might present the assembly to himself glorious, having no spot, or wrinkle, or any of such things; but that it might be holy and blameless" (Ephesians 5:25 - 27). Christ has died for the assembly; He nourishes and cherishes it, and thus on the divine side she bears no trace of having come under contrary influences, so that in her
you have the features of the true Israel of God. Mere knowledge of Scripture is of no avail if we have not come under Christ and been formed after Him. Thus Adam's failure in headship demonstrates the great necessity for the coming in of Christ.
Then in Enoch another thought comes in as illustrating another feature which is characteristic of the true Jew. He walked with God. Now this is the effect of Christ being known; it is the normal effect of receiving Christ. In this man we have one whose heart and mind were under the influence of God for three hundred years. The proof of this is seen in his naming his son Methushelah. There was no flood while Methushelah lived. While the influence of Enoch remained in his son there was no flood, his name indicating that it would not come till the one whose father had walked with God had passed away. The date of Methushelah's death and the start of the flood were the same. What a voice to us! Can we stay the judgment? After we have received Christ, God is to be our only outlook, and our life is to be marked by walking in communion with Him. Methushelah lived to be nine hundred and sixty-nine years old; such was the measure of his father's influence. "Enoch walked with God", we read, and "he was not, for God took him". Yet before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God. We read also of him that he, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, "Behold, the Lord has come amidst his holy myriads, to execute judgment against all" (Jude 14, 15). If in type he had had influence in his son as the result of walking with God, so that the flood was stayed, yet he had also recognised the
need for coming judgment. Thus we see in Enoch not only another feature of the true Israel walking with God, but also the effect of it. In Adam and Enoch, as I have said, we get the objective side.
Now in Abraham and Jacob we have subjective types of how this will be worked out in the actual history of the Jews in the latter days, but which is now found in those who are Jews, not in the letter, but in the spirit. Abram presents the faith side; he had answered to the call of God, had broken away from the great barriers to faith, and had moved toward great realities. He left country, and kindred, and father's house, to inherit a land that was unknown to him. What Abram left in these three elements - country, kindred and father's house - hinder each one of us, I believe, more or less. Later, the Lord appeared to Abraham at the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent, in the heat of the day. He found time for communion, even at such a time - the heat of the day. Do we find time in the history of our souls for an interview of this kind? Are we free and at leisure for divine visitations? Our leisure is our own; we may be tired and oppressed in our occupation, but do we find freedom for communion and intercourse with God in our times of leisure? In Abraham's case three men came to him, and he instantly recognised One of those three as a divine Person, and said as he ran to meet Him, "Lord". We are not told who the other two were: perhaps Abraham did not know, but he was able to recognise the Lord. Then he provided refreshment, rest and comfort for them. Sarah his wife, in sympathy with his movements, made cakes quickly, while Abraham ran to the herd to fetch a calf and
gave it to a young man who "hasted to dress it. And he took thick and sweet milk, and the calf that he had dressed, and set it before them; and he stood before them under the tree, and they ate". How sweet is this communion in the heat of the day! Some propose to themselves to work till toward the close of their life, then to retire and enjoy communion, but that is not the way; here we have one in communion on the journey through life, and in the heat of the day.
Nehemiah found occasion, even at the king's feast - the greatest monarch of his day - to enjoy intercourse with his God. As the king's cupbearer, with the cup of wine in his hand to give to the king, we read that immediately the king's question was put he "prayed to the God of the heavens" (Nehemiah 2:4). This feature of the true Jew was seen in him even in captivity. That is worthy of note.
Now in Jacob we have things worked out, and the actual name of the man changed to Israel. In Abraham, as we have said, we have the faith side, but in Jacob the experimental. He counted upon God and prayed to Him for blessing, and God gave him the discipline to bring him to it. One incident in that discipline is recorded in the scripture we read: "He rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two maidservants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford of the Jabbok; and he took them and led them over the river ... And Jacob remained alone". Then God drew near enough to him to touch him, and he to touch God. God will come near enough to be touched and to touch you. Have you ever been alone with God in the sense of this? Have you ever appreciated this when you were alone? Well, it was so with Jacob. God drew near to Jacob and
touched him. We read, "A man wrestled with him ... and the joint of Jacob's thigh was dislocated as he wrestled with him". But Jacob prevailed, to the delight of God. He said, "I will not let thee go except thou bless me". How God delights when we have power with Him! What a day for Israel when this is true! It is not terms or doctrine, but a Person, and Jacob held on and prevailed; therefore "he is not a Jew who is one outwardly". This experience was much to Jacob, the joint of his thigh was dislocated. God brought him low naturally, but enlarged him spiritually. His name was changed; "Thy name shall not henceforth be called Jacob, but Israel", meaning that as a prince he had power with God and with men, and had prevailed. What is your name, beloved - Jacob or Israel? Under the Lord's discipline Jacob became Israel, and through grace as Christians that is now our name - "the Israel of God".
So Isaiah the prophet says, "I will record the loving-kindnesses of Jehovah, the praises of Jehovah, according to all that Jehovah hath bestowed upon us, and the great goodness toward the house of Israel which he hath bestowed upon them according to his mercies, and according to the multitude of his loving-kindnesses. And he said, They are indeed my people, children that will not lie; and he became their Saviour". May the Lord grant that in His grace there may be with us the features of the Israel of God - not only the possession of the truth, but the expression of it, so that there may be a testimony for God here now, as there will be from the whole house of Israel in the day to come, and that all may see that we are His
people, children that will not lie: so that He may be our Saviour.
Croydon, June 1926
Psalm 8:1 - 9; Matthew 20:28 - 34; Matthew 21:1 - 16; Hebrews 2:8 - 12
What I had before me tonight was that our affections might keep pace with the light which we have as to Christ. It is possible for our minds to grasp certain things about Him, but it is only as the affections are in movement that we can be preserved: we are preserved in the measure in which we love Christ. That is the test. Whether we love Christ is a test which is always applied to our state. All of us, young and old, have had to face temptations and matters calling for decisions, and difficulties have arisen as to how to act in these. Such questions would not be so full of difficulty if we were more governed by the desire to please the Lord. I believe that a great many of our difficulties would disappear if we had but that one desire and purpose before us, to please Him. We may be faced with some question which has to be decided, something in connection with our pathway, and we may say: 'I know what I would love best naturally'. But the point is, we are not to be regulated by that, but, as I have said, by what is pleasing to the Lord. We are to be governed by what is pleasing to Him, and do you not think it is a very wonderful opportunity that you and I have on this earth - that of giving pleasure to the Lord? Why, think of the honour of it,
think of the dignity of it, that we should have the opportunity of solving questions in relation to that which is for His pleasure! I think that heaven must take great interest in what is going on in that regard on this earth. Many a time we have questions to be decided, and, alas, many a time we give way and yield to what is natural to us; there is nothing pleasing to the Lord in that.
I remember very early in my own life - I do not intend to say very much about that - but I can remember how the Lord taught me a lesson just on that point. I was very tried by what a brother said to me on the occasion of my asking a question at a meeting. He said it publicly, before everyone, and I was greatly tried about it and I recall saying to myself, 'Well, I shall not take any more part in this meeting; I am not going to be treated like this', for my question and what I had to say was perfectly honest. But afterwards the Lord seemed to say to me, 'Take no notice of it; just go on; you have Me to please'. I can remember too, as if it were but yesterday, how the Lord gave me a sense then that while I had done violence to my own feelings, He was pleased with what I had done. I only mention this to show the opportunities you and I have at the present moment. It is an honour which might be coveted, to be regulated on this earth by what is pleasing to the Lord. In Psalm 69:31, we read, "It shall please Jehovah more than an ox, - a bullock with horns and cloven hoofs", which proves that the spirit of Christ is better than the ways of flesh. It turns too for a testimony, for the next verse in the psalm is, "The meek shall see it, they shall be glad". If you and I could get a look into heaven, we should find that
all heaven is bowing down and owning His worth - not a discordant note there. Every one obeys His command; but, think of it, down here in this world such as we have the opportunity of doing Him honour in seeking to be here for His pleasure.
Turning now to the passages I read, my reason for referring to Psalm 8 and coupling it with Matthew 20 and 21 and Hebrews 2 was to show that Psalm 8 is carried forward into the New Testament and that the Lord Jesus gives it a present application. He does so in Matthew 21, and the Spirit of God gives it a very definite present application in Hebrews, so I thought that perhaps we might profit by looking a little at the different ways in which Christ's present position is spoken of in these scriptures. Psalm 8 is a very remarkable one. From the first Psalm onward you will find that there are those on earth who have light about the present position of Christ. I have no doubt that those referred to in Psalm 8 are those who will be here in the way of testimony after the assembly is gone; and the one point which they have got clear about, as in Psalm 2, is the present position of Christ. "Why are the nations in tumultuous agitation, and why do the peoples meditate a vain thing?" (Psalm 2:1); and it adds, "I have anointed my king upon Zion, the hill of my holiness" (verse 6). That is to say, that the remnant in that day will have the light of the present position of Christ, just as the assembly has it today. Through grace we have no doubt at all about it. I can well remember the effect upon my own spirit when our brother Mr Raven said, 'I would like you to think of what it would mean if you and I were taken off this earth straight up into
those courts above, and had a look round as to all that is transpiring up there'. We would be greatly affected by the fact that the Lord Jesus is there in supremacy. He is absolutely supreme in heaven. There is nowhere there that we could look but the Lord Jesus would be acknowledged, and the effect on coming back to earth would be that we should each say, 'I am going to carry out on earth what they do in heaven'. That is the idea.
Well, that is the position in this section of the Psalms; there are those who have light about the position of Christ. It would not be possible to think of anything greater than that - to have light about Christ. We dwelt a little upon it this afternoon. It is wonderful that we in this world, in the day of the rejection of Christ, have light as to how great He is, have light as to His personal glory and His greatness, and it is wonderful too to have the opportunity down here of adjusting ourselves in relation to it. Now, that is what the people of God will have in the day to come. Then following upon Psalm 2, in the next few Psalms, Psalm 3 - Psalm 7, we get a great deal of sorrow and trouble coming in. The people of God come into reproach. None of us can disguise the fact that the present supremacy of Christ is not owned on this earth. The world has no sense of it, and we are left in this scene, in this place of contrariety, where everything is against Him, to be here in lowliness and under the control of the One who sits on high.
But then Psalm 8 ushers in the day of glory of the Son of man. It says, "Jehovah our Lord". Is it, 'How fully Thou hast met our need'? No. You may say, 'I thought He had met all our need'. Yes, fully; there is not a single question,
no matter how intricate or difficult, but what will and does find its solution in Christ. They say, "Jehovah our Lord", and mark the possessive pronoun there: not, 'Jehovah the Lord;' better than that - "Jehovah our Lord". I put it to every young Christian in this meeting tonight: Can you say that? I do not ask, Can you repeat the words? I do not mean that. Nor do I ask, Do you know it as an article of creed? but, Are you such an one down here in this world as can say, 'My Lord'? "Jehovah our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!" - note, all the earth, not merely a little corner of it. Think of how wonderful it is to be identified with the circle of saints on earth who own Christ! I think I value it more every day I live, to be found in company with those who love to honour Christ. We could not compare it with any company in this world, however great it might be, politically or socially, and nothing can be compared with the opportunity that we have of being linked with the circle on earth where Christ is held supreme in the affections. That is an honour indeed! I wonder whether we all value it. I wonder whether we all value the favour of being linked up and identified with those who love to honour Christ. I am quite sure that heaven looks down with the greatest interest upon such, looks down upon those who treasure the light of heaven above, and who can say, "Jehovah our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!" The apostle in Philippians 3:8, having learned the worth of Christ personally, had become greatly attached to Him, and says, "I count also all things to be loss". 'But, Paul', you say, 'all things?' 'Yes, all things to be loss'.
Paul, beloved friends, had not miscalculated. It was a very great thing for him to say, "I count also all things to be loss;" but, mark, it goes on to say, "On account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, on account of whom I have suffered the loss of all, and count them to be filth, that I may gain Christ;" or, as it reads in footnote c, may 'have Christ for my gain'. Note, it was not because they were bad things in themselves that he counted them but loss. Many a thing might be very good in itself, but the apostle puts it alongside this excellency. Oh, I would desire that the word might get better hold of my own heart - "the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord!"
I take it that that is the same line that we get here - "Jehovah our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!" Do you not love to contemplate it? Do you not like to take a look forward into a day yet to come? We are going to be with the Lord then, in the day when the honour of Christ will be owned and recognised universally. I love to think of how people will speak in that day. We read, "His name shall endure for ever; his name shall be continued as long as the sun: and men shall bless themselves in him; all nations shall call him blessed" (Psalm 72:17). The common topic of converse upon the street then will be the worth of Christ. This is what ought to mark us now in our relations with one another. We were speaking a little this afternoon about the difference between what was natural and what was spiritual; and we have now an eternal link, a spiritual link, a living bond, by which we are all bound together. That bond is that we love Christ and are interested in all
that is connected with His name. What they will do actually in that day to come, you and I do now. When I was in a street car in Toronto, I was struck by seeing an advertisement on the side of it. It was a very simple one; it was this: 'Know your city and speak of it'. Now, we belong to the holy city, but do we speak about it? I think it would be well for us to 'know our city and speak of it' We have cause to speak of it. It is that which God is effecting, that which will be eternally for His pleasure.
I pass on now to the next clause in the psalm: "Who hast set thy majesty". Is it in the heavens? No, dear friends, higher than that. We were hearing today about the way in which God is known in creation, that God has brought into existence things that can be seen, His works of creation by which may be known "his eternal power and divinity" (Romans 1:20), but I find here it says, "Hast set thy majesty above the heavens". It is not merely connected with this earth, but it is that which is universally and eternally secured; that upon which eternity hangs is all secured there. Now we come to another very remarkable statement: "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou established praise because of thine adversaries". When the Lord quotes this in Matthew 21 you will find He says, "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise". I want you to notice out of whose mouth the praise comes. We might be inclined to say we are a wonderful people on this earth; we delight in Christ and we see Him exalted, and not many people on this earth know it. Beloved friends, that will not do. We shall never make any progress on those lines. Every bit of light about Christ brings with it that
which corresponds on our side to going down; and then we take our right place in relation to Him. Note the way in which John comes down, when he says, "The thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to unloose" (John 1:27). Do you not love John for saying that? I think I do. He got such a sense of his own littleness, his own smallness, that he is prepared to do the most menial thing for Christ, and he says, 'I am not worthy to even do that'. Lowliness in our hearts, coupled with the apprehension of the exaltation of Christ, maintains the balance in our souls. Oh, dear friends, spiritual health and prosperity are open to us, but the moment we get an exalted idea about ourselves the Lord takes us down. He always works on those lines. He will allow certain circumstances to come in to expose us, and we get humbled about it. I believe the Lord works consistently along those lines, so here it says, "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings".
What are you and I? Are we "babes and sucklings" - that which is the expression of weakness? Babes and sucklings derive all their strength from another, but it is out of mouths like these that God has established praise. He would bring praise out of your heart and mine. For what purpose? That He might still the enemy and the avenger. Let me tell you this, Satan has used his power consistently and continuously so that man might never have any good to say about God, nor any good to say about Christ. He instilled into the heart of man at the beginning that God was not good, and he has kept along those lines. He does not care how long he keeps you occupied with your own unworthiness if only he can keep you away from the worth
of Christ. The object that he determinedly blocks and seeks to obscure in every way is our having good to say about Christ, but nevertheless God has secured it. He has those who can say, "Jehovah our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!" It comes too out of the mouth of babes and sucklings. But what has God effected by it? He can, so to speak, turn to Satan and say, 'Satan, what do you think of that? I have secured it and you have not been able to hinder Me'. God has effected it in the end, and the way in which He has effected it results in His getting a response, a deep, eternal response from the heart of man to the worth of Christ. Man has been reached in grace, his eyes have been opened and his affections have been attached to Christ.
I only make one more remark about the Psalms, and that in a general way, before we pass on. The Psalms are very interesting. I do not know how many psalms you have made. A psalm is a record of experience you have had with God, an actual experience that you have had - not one learned out of books, not something acquired, not one read out of the Bible even, but a personal experience with God. This psalm begins with Him and closes up with the same: "Jehovah our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!" The psalmist calls attention to the heavens, which, he says, are "the work of thy fingers". Think of the greatness of God working in the creation of the heavens - the work of His fingers. God brought the moon and the stars into existence; how great He must be! Then it says, "What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?" It has often been a wonder to me, in reading the Lord's prayer to the Father in John 17, to
find two Divine Persons speaking about what is happening in one of those worlds which belong to Them. What do you think occupies Their attention? Something in Mars? No, oh no, dear friends. Something in those worlds away back far into space that it has taken thousands of years for light to reach? No, something greater than that. His fingers made those things. But what does engage Them is men. "What is man, that thou art mindful of him?" We have been brought into a circle of divine affections, and in John 17 we find that what the Lord Jesus spoke to the Father about was the men whom the Father had given Him. He is greatly concerned about those whom He loves being down here in this world. Do you not appreciate that, dear friends? Do you not think that there is something very great about it, that we who are but creatures of dust, as far as our natural origin is concerned, should have such a place? Oh, the dignity of it!
I turn now to Matthew 20. I read a verse or two before the incident as to the two blind men in order that we might take account of the greatness of Christ. Chapter 21 is a marvellous opening up of His dignity and glory, but before that comes into view, it says in this chapter, in connection with the strife that there was amongst the disciples as to who should be greatest, "As indeed the Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many". I mention this, as I believe it is food for our affections. We have to see that our affections are nourished, and there you get that by which our affections are nourished that "the Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for
many". Shall you and I ever forget that? Never. Through eternity we shall never forget that; it will be eternally in the hearts of the redeemed through the ages to come - that He gave His life a ransom for many. I daresay we are intelligent about the fact, but I appeal to my own heart as I do also to yours. Have we taken in the greatness of it, that "the Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve"? He took the place of a servant; He was the true Hebrew bondman who could say, "I love my master, my wife, and my children, I will not go free" (Exodus 21:5). O, beloved friends, does it not move your heart, does it not touch your heart, that the Lord (how great He is!) takes the place of the bondman, to serve? And more than that, He gives His life a ransom for many. Think of the blessedness of being included in that little word "many"! It is not enough that you are clear about what is called the plan of salvation, but is your heart profoundly moved in the contemplation of this, that He gave His life a ransom for you?
Let us ponder over it, and consider it in all its blessedness. We are probably as clear as possible about the truth of it; we are orthodox about the doctrine of it, but think of the sweetness, the blessedness of it, what it means - He gave His life a ransom for me, for me. Ere long we shall be with Him forever, but think of it and dwell upon it now, in order that there may be awakened a response in our affections to Him. He is worthy of it and He counts upon it, and that is how He works in order that responsive affections might be maintained in our hearts. There was the desire in the two sons of Zebedee to be great in His kingdom, and the ten were filled with indignation, but the
Lord meets it by putting Himself in all His unfathomable love before their hearts, in order that there might be an answering response in their hearts to Him.
Following upon that, two blind men get their eyes opened. I do not think anything has done us more damage than to make these incidents recorded in the gospels merely illustrations of the gospel as received at the beginning of our spiritual history. I find no fault with using any of these incidents as illustrative of the gospel, but we have to take the moral bearing of them and learn why they are grouped together and come in a certain sequence. The gospel is so great that one values every opportunity for setting forth such good news for men. I refer now to the incident in connection with the blind men getting their eyes opened, and I see it as illustrating the way in which we get light about Christ. Some of us received a little fresh light as to Christ this afternoon; some of us got a little further impression about Him; that is, our eyes were opened to see what we never saw before as to Him.
It is well when we move on in that way. The Lord counts upon our getting vision. He counts upon us having vision, not only to have those things as doctrine in our minds, but to have vision in our souls. So these two blind men got their eyes opened and they followed Him in the way. What they saw is in the next chapter. They saw wonderful things when they got their eyes opened; they got a sight of the dignity and glory of Christ. The Lord was moving toward Jerusalem. He had sent two of His disciples into the village, saying, "Ye will find an ass tied, and a colt with it; loose them and lead them to me". I love that, dear
friends. It is the exercise of the rights of Christ - a little bit of an indication of a day yet to come. The rights of Christ! Why, He has a right over you and me. It says, "Do ye not know ... ye are not your own? for ye have been bought with a price" (1 Corinthians 6:19, 20). That is to say, as plainly as words can convey it, that we are the property of Another, we belong to Another. So the Lord exercised His kingly rights here. For all I know, there may be here some tied colt. There may be someone in this meeting who has been tied; that is, they may have been tied by their parents. They have been tied for many a year, and perhaps they are feeling it irksome. They are feeling that, being tied up, they cannot go to those places that other young people go to, and they think they ought to have liberty to go to them. Ah, you have been tied, and it was affection that tied you, but the Lord has a voice for you and He says to the disciples, "Loose them". He is going to untie that cord. He may untie the cord tonight in some young heart here, and He says, "If any one say anything to you, ye shall say, The Lord has need of them". I would like to say to any young person in this room to whom it is irksome to be tied, 'The Lord has need of you'. Are you going to recognise His right? He has rights over you. Ere long He will assert those rights. In the day to come He will do so, but He would have that cord that has bound you so long unloosed now.
"The Lord has need of them, and straightway he will send them". They came in for service that day when He was about to move into Jerusalem. It was an indication of coming glory. There was His right, the assertion of His rights, and the acknowledgment of His rights. God so
ordered it that that testimony was borne. It was a colt upon which man had never sat. The Lord Jesus sits on it, and the Lord Jesus can break you into His service. I wonder whether you have ever sought to serve the Lord? I would like, if I could, to show you the blessedness of being here in the service of the One to whom universal rights belong. So they brought them and He sat upon them. He rode in His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and the multitude cry out, "Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed be he who comes in the name of the Lord". It was an indication, as I have said, of coming glory; but there were those there that day whose affections were in movement, those who loved the Lord, and it was an honour, an opportunity which they valued and which they prized because they loved Him, and well they might.
Then He went into the temple. I take it that the first section is more connected with kingdom glory - with the display of His rights as King. The next section is more connected with the temple. The Lord went into the temple and He found what He described as a "den of robbers" - men were using for their own enrichment that which ought to have been for the pleasure of God. They bought and sold, using means for getting gain, so the Lord comes in and cleanses the temple. On the one hand, we get the Lord anticipating the display of His kingdom, and, on the other hand, His competency in the temple to cleanse out what was unsuitable to God.
It has struck me much of late that, in speaking of the holy city it says, "And nothing common, nor that maketh an abomination and a lie, shall at all enter into it" (Revelation 21:27).
God has a circle on this earth just as exclusive as that; nothing that was put away and set aside in the death of Christ has any right in that holy circle. The death of Christ tests and tries everything in connection with our state, and that which is of the flesh and unsuitable to God has no place in God's house, and so the Lord comes in to cleanse it. That brings in the hatred and opposition of the chief priests and scribes toward those who had lifted up their voices for Christ, but the Lord vindicated them. He says, "Have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?" The babes and sucklings were there, the house of God was the place where praise should be heard, and it was heard there that day, but it was heard as being under the control of Christ and where He was held in affection. There was that which was not only for the blessing of man, but for the pleasure of God.
In closing I refer now to Hebrews 2. I read those verses because of the touching appeal that is made in them to the affections. It says in verse 9, "We see Jesus, who was made some little inferior to angels on account of the suffering of death" - the suffering of death. Then it goes on to say, "that by the grace of God he should taste death" - taste death - and further in verse 10 we read, "It became him ... to make perfect the leader of their salvation through sufferings" - through sufferings. Now, I commend those three statements to you: "the suffering of death", "taste death", and "through sufferings". They are connected with the entrance into privilege. You get those who are spoken of as "sons", and you get those who are spoken of as "brethren", but in connection with the two you get what
speaks of the sufferings of Christ three times over. As I understand it, there can be no movement into privilege, into the blessedness of sonship, into the consciousness of being of the brethren of Christ, apart from some measure of appreciation of what underlay it all. Before we can touch such blessings as are unfolded and spoken of there, there is the setting forth of that which would have the greatest effect upon our hearts. Think of it, beloved friends! It says, "We see Jesus, who was made some little inferior to angels on account of the suffering of death".
I remember a time in our history, as those recovered to the truth, when we used to dwell a great deal upon the sufferings of Christ at the Supper, and it was pointed out, and rightly so, that in the Supper it is the expression of the Lord's love in death. It is that which speaks of the intensity of His love. He died for us, but I put it to you, and I put it to myself: Have we any habit of soul of dwelling upon the sufferings of Christ - "the suffering of death"? It is a blessed theme for private meditation. Perhaps someone says, 'My sins are all forgiven; I am going to heaven, and I come to the breaking of bread every Sunday morning, come to the readings, and attend all the meetings'. Beloved friends, let me ask, do you want to have your heart in movement toward Christ? You will be deeply touched in the contemplation of what underlies the grace which has reached you - the suffering of death. It is not merely that He died, but He tasted death. He knows what it means. He entered into the reality of it. Then again, we find: "For it became him ... to make perfect the leader of their salvation through sufferings". You would almost think that
"sufferings" was the characteristic word of this section, but it is a word which brings before us that which is intended to feed our affections.
Many a person would say (I know it myself; I used to say it), 'I find my heart very cold; I wish I loved the Lord more'. I do not think you will make progress on those lines. The question is, are your affections being fed, do you love the Lord as one who contemplates all that it meant for Him before you could have a place and portion with Himself both now and eternally? Do you remember that woman in Luke 7? She loved the Lord; she had qualified to be in the circle of affection here on this earth. How? She loved much. Did she attain to it? Did it come by trying? No, even Simon, the Pharisee, understood this - the one to whom much is forgiven, the same loves much. So the deeper the sense we have of what we owe to Christ, the more intense will be our affections, and the more our affections will grow; and the more we feed upon those sufferings, the more the affections are developed. What it cost Him in order that we might occupy eternally that place and portion with Himself will be an eternal theme for our hearts.
So I commend it to you in closing. See to it that, while we get a little more light about all that Christ is, we keep pace with it in affection. We shall find that the Spirit of God will help us along that line. The Spirit of God loves to promote spiritual affections. He would engage us with all that Christ is in order that there might be an answering response in all our hearts to Him who loves us. You find it working out in the apostle. The apostle was a most inveterate hater of Christ before he was converted, and you
might have expected that the Lord with power in His hand would have swept him off the scene. No, He says, 'I will make that man as ardent a lover of Me as he was a hater', and, beloved friends, He succeeded, and He always succeeds when He gets the opportunity. Listen to what the apostle says: "The Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me" (Galatians 2:20).
Indianapolis, December 1926
Genesis 22:2; Genesis 24:67; Genesis 25:28; Genesis 44:30, 31; Genesis 45:1, 2, 4, 14, 15
I have to say first, in regard to this wonderful book out of which I have read a few passages, that it is the beginning of the revelation of God to us. Now it seems to me of immense importance that we should recognise that God has begun to speak to us, and has thrown a flood of light on the situation. Man naturally has no light of God, outside the revelation of God - there is no doubt of that. You cannot find any light of God outside the revelation of God, and so God has been pleased to introduce a whole flood of light in order to reveal what He is, and what His thoughts as to man are.
There is a vast circle of light to which we have no access, and never shall have access. There is an infinite sphere of light in which God dwells, which is for ever hidden from us. God is such, having lived from eternal ages, and living to eternal ages, that He must be, in the nature of things, hidden from the knowledge of man. That is to say - and it is well for us to remember it, because I think it tends to a greater reverence than we sometimes show in respect of divine Persons - the greatness of God is such, that it never does for us, however intimate we may be with Him as revealed, to forgot the fact and bearing of His
greatness as God Himself. But besides that, there is also a vast system of revelation in which God has been pleased to make Himself known to man.
Now this book begins with, "In the beginning;" it is the book of the beginning. God has been pleased to come out and make Himself known to man in the activities of His love. You can well understand that God, having everything before Him from beginning to end, brings out, even at the earliest stage of the revelation, matters concerning that which was nearest to His heart. I refer, of course, to what comes out in Christ, and what comes out in regard to that which is dear to Christ - the assembly - and what comes out in regard to the family of God; although, of course, you do not get the full light until the blessed Lord comes. As it says, "No one has seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him" (John 1:18). Thank God, that is so, yet God, having the whole revelation before Him at the moment He began to speak to man, brings out what was nearest and dearest to His heart - what His thought was - and what He intended revealing fully in His Son. I say this, because I think we must all be very much struck, in the book of Genesis, with the number of strands of which its beautiful pattern is composed. We find, running through the book, numerous strands, so to speak; and I only propose to follow a few of them, out of the vast number which compose the book as a whole.
When you come to think of it, the book is vast in its scope; it takes up, for example, the creation of the universe, and the flight of a poor fugitive slave. God takes up such
things in this book. He takes up the position of the heavenly man - I refer to Isaac; He takes up, on the other hand, the depravity of man and its just judgment - I refer, of course, to Sodom. He takes up the story of a man like Jacob; and in the same book He takes up the whole millennial reign of the Lord Jesus Christ, in figure. And so we could pass the whole book under review, and see how many sided it is. God is pleased in it to take up threads and show their beginning, which carry on in a continuous pattern right through the Scriptures; so you find these threads left, as it were, so that you can pick them up and follow them right through God's book. That is a very wonderful thing, and I would just like to say one word to the young people here in connection with this. Every one of you is acquainted now, as you go to schools and colleges, with the attacks on Scripture, and more especially, on this book. No one can pass through the world nowadays without his ears or mind being defiled by hearing the attacks of the enemy on this book, because if the enemy can do away with this book he will do away with the whole superstructure - the whole revelation of God. What I want to say is this, 'Do seek to get the real spiritual meaning of the book, because if you get the real spiritual meaning, you will laugh at these attacks. There is nothing in them at all, but you will not see that if you do not get the spiritual meaning of the book'. So when its marvellous character comes before you, and you see that every incident and every verse has a spiritual meaning, and when you come to grasp even the one-hundredth part of that spiritual meaning, your souls will be established in the truth of God's word. I find that with
many young people there is very great and grave danger, leading to many unhappy moments in their souls, if they are not established in this way.
The main subject I had before me was to bring to your notice the remarkable fact that even in this book, so early, you get a hint of John's ministry; and not only so, but of Paul's. What I feel is that we should lay ourselves open for the reception of truth, and the enjoyment of what these beloved apostles say to us. I do not mean - for the moment - the detail of it, but the grand outlines of their doctrine. You will wonder, perhaps, what I meant by saying that John's truth is hinted at, and I will explain. "Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and there offer him up for a burnt-offering". Now, that is just a little window, so to speak, letting us see what was in the heart of God in making known what He intended to bring out through His servant John; that is, that "The Father loves the Son, and has given all things to be in his hand" (John 3:35). You will find that it says, "Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac" (Genesis 25:5); so putting these two scriptures together, you see that God brings out at a very early stage what was in His mind. I think it is understandable that if you have a thing very much on your mind, you let it out. Well, God had these thoughts very much on His mind, and He has let them out to us.
There is a wonderful system of divine affections existing, first of all between divine Persons, and we are allowed to know what the relations of these divine Persons are to one another in affection. As to their essence, that we
leave, but as to their affections, here we have it that there is a divine reciprocity of affection existing between the Father and the Son. But how does that apply to us? Just in this way - the blessed Lord said, "That the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them" (John 17:26); that is, that the same sort of affection is to be in us. So that you have the same kind of affection showered down upon those who are His, as upon the Son. Therefore you have the foundation of what the apostle John brings before us, because you have the essence of it; whatever the details may be, you have the thing there in its primitive origin.
It is an immense thing for our hearts to be established in the very essence of the revelation that God has made to us through the apostle John. It is for our help and encouragement and enjoyment, and it seems to me that it gives a stability to us and a happiness to us to know that our souls can resort to the Father's love - to the inner region. Despite anything that happens here, we touch eternal realities; whatever the sorrow and trial in the assembly, or in our own circumstances, you cannot imagine any change in the blessedness of these affectionate relations. You cannot imagine any change between the Father and the Son, neither can you imagine any change existing between the Father, the Son, and us. It seems to me that this is the greatest strength and comfort to the soul; and what I feel is that it should be more our habit to resort to that bright scene connected with what is eternal, and then we can take up difficulties as stabilised by that which never moves. Now, I would challenge myself - and surely, in doing so, you too - as to how far our souls are established
in the happy enjoyment of this relationship and love? It is not that we do not know love, but the thing is, how far do we bask in it? I know, of course, that we enter into it more fully in the company of His own. It must be so. But what I would seek to inquire is, how much do our habits of mind lend themselves to the enjoyment of this blessed relationship, which neither time nor chance can change?
I should like to commend to you the subject of meditation. We know the trend of modern life; the rush to make a living, the demands that family and business, and even meetings make upon us, but at the same time, I do not think we ever get real strength of soul unless we cultivate the habit of meditation. In Psalm 119, it is mentioned numbers of times: "I will meditate upon thy precepts" (verse 15), or "thy statutes", or "thy word". It is not that you meditate upon nothing; you do not sit in a dreamy sort of way and think of nothing. That is what an Indian fakir might consider the height of happiness. That is not what I am speaking of. It is in regard to what God has been pleased to make known to us; His work, His words, and the blessed Person of our Lord Jesus Christ; in fact, all that is connected with Him in whom the whole revelation of God has been made. What I would like to impress upon each one is the importance of cultivating this habit, because, I think, there we get strength of soul. We allow the gracious rays of the love of God to shine into our hearts. It is not that we study the Scriptures in a natural way; I am speaking of the happy habit of meditation, which can be encouraged and cultivated. So in regard to this subject - the revelation of the love of the Father - I feel that we need to be in the
sunshine and enjoyment of it continually. Now, that very briefly indicates to you that we have the truth, as brought out by John, before us.
In the next passage I read we find that Isaac took Rebecca into the tent, and it says, "Isaac led her into his mother Sarah's tent; and he took Rebecca, and she became his wife, and he loved her. And Isaac was comforted after the death of his mother". There, of course, we touch the doctrine of Paul, which made an immense impression on his whole course and ministry. Isaac took Rebecca to the tent, and "he loved her". There we see in figure the love of Christ for the assembly. I am not now referring to the dispensational thought in the "tent", but the seat of divine love. That is, that the love of Christ for the assembly is, and must be, hidden from the world. It is a private affair; it is a "tent" where the outpourings of Christ's love are poured forth on His assembly. All the intimacies of Christ's love are poured out inside a "tent;" they are hidden from the world. Who can describe them, dear friends? only the recipients! As the hymn says:
Who can tell, who can measure, the greatness of Christ's love to the assembly? It is our portion; it is the portion of all composing the assembly. When one thinks of the time that has elapsed since Christ ascended, and the care and love He has shown to His assembly, the solicitude of love, the washing of water by the word, to prevent spots and
wrinkles and every such thing, the intense care of the Lord - how can one measure the greatness of His love? Divine love is not just a sentiment or expressed in words of love, but there has been - both in regard to the Father's love who sent the Son, and in the love of Christ for the assembly - the exhibition of it in that wonderful act, the death of Christ. That is where our hearts find it; that is where we begin to learn it, but it is now made known in present fulness to our hearts. I do not dwell now on the failure side, but I am thinking of the wonderful attentions of divine love, in secret, in the "tent" - the love of Christ made known to His assembly.
Perhaps you might wonder why I took up the other passages - what the connection was? Well, I am profoundly impressed with the fact that only souls who are really in the enjoyment of what I spoke about can face things; and God is pleased to help us to face difficulties, because He works things out in detail with us. How often have we been impressed with the wonderful life of the Lord Jesus! How His life was taken up, not only with public utterances and teaching, but with wonderful incidents in His attention to individuals. If you read the gospels you find numbers of persons coming into contact with Him, and the immense care given by the Spirit of God to the delineation of the marvellous manner in which He dealt with individual souls. Here was One - God Himself come down here, the Word made flesh - and you might have thought He would set up a school of doctrine to display the greatness of God. No! He exemplified what God was in His life; in all He did and said He displayed God, and the touches in His life are so
beautiful that the more you read the incidents in the gospels, the more you find they reward detailed study. Every act of that Person fills our hearts with admiration. See how He could come down to the details of the difficulties that met Him; come down from the mount to the lunatic at the foot of it!
That is why I read those passages, because they contain, I think, a warning and an encouragement for us. Here we find Isaac; he loved Esau, but he loved him because of his venison. It was not a disinterested love - it was a love for what it could get - based on an old man's taste for food. It was love which had partiality; and that is where, I think, sometimes our difficulties lie. Is it not so? we love for what we can get. We may love a man because he is of the same calling, or the same family, or, wider still, of the same nation, or because he has similar tastes; is not such love partial? Do we love people because they are Christ's? We love people surely because they are Christ's; it is the mark of a converted soul to seek the company of God's people. Anything else is a contrast to the divine love I have been speaking of. But may we not be partial in our affections for those that are Christ's? You say, 'Some do not walk with us'. Does that change our love? I do not think so. They may erect barriers, but I think there is, and ought to be, love in each of our hearts ready to flow out to every one who is the Lord's.
Brotherly love is not love in its full height, but it is most valuable in the relations of the people of God towards one another. It was brought about in Jacob's sons by discipline. What did Judah think of what his brethren did to
Joseph? Did he think of his father's sorrow and tears? did Judah mind at all? Not that we know of. We hear of no word of sympathy with that father, no word of pity for him. There was the absence of family affection. There was jealousy at the bottom of all the trouble. Jealousy, I have no doubt, is at the bottom of a great many troubles in the family of God. If we find any trace of it in ourselves, let us judge it unsparingly. That spirit is a terrible thing, and has done more harm in the assembly of God than anything else. That was the cause of the hardness of their hearts. I refer to this to show the change; the rough dealings of Joseph with them aroused their consciences and brought to pass real repentance. There is no doubt about it, their sin came to their remembrance. And now, what do we find in Judah? We find a contrast. He says, If the lad be not with us "thy servants will bring down the grey hairs of thy servant our father with sorrow to Sheol". He had sensibilities of family affection; he thought of his father. He says, 'I will do anything now to save my father sorrow; I will do anything for my brother, I will sacrifice myself for my brother'. Is not that the brotherly spirit? Oh! that we might have more and more of this brotherly spirit!
I just want to point out what happened. Joseph had to give vent to his affection, and he put all the Egyptians out. The unfolding of these family affections is also a private matter. Think of all this weeping, all this display of brotherly repentance and brotherly love, and kissing! all done in private. Certainly the Egyptians heard, and in one sense it was public. "By this shall all know that ye are disciples of mine, if ye have love amongst yourselves"
(John 13:35), that is certainly public; but all the display of affection and love is private, that is not for the Egyptians. So its beauties are seen by God, who is the originator of it. Is that not the great principle in regard to matters that come up amongst us, that whatever has to be done should be done in the spirit of brotherly love? How happy when brotherly affection is so much in exercise that difficulties do not occur at all! That is what I am sure God desires. I only point these things out as being really, I believe, the result of the enjoyment of what I spoke of at the start.
In conclusion, I would say to you, how happy and blessed it is to be so in the good of the divine affections of the Father and the Son, and the divine affections of Christ to the assembly, as to be answering in affection to Him! With regard to our response to the love of the Father and the love of Christ, it says, "We love because he has first loved us" (1 John 4:19); and our love to Him largely consists in the apprehension of His love. It is love that begets love, and it is the sensitivity of our souls to His love that leads to response. It is in the profound sense of being loved, whether by the Father, or by the Son, and being of that assembly which Christ loves, that our response to love lies. May the Lord bless the word!
Belfast, April 1928
Romans 8:18 - 24, 29; 1 Timothy 2:1 - 10; 1 Timothy 3:14 - 16
I want to say a few words this evening upon the house of God, because of its great importance at the present moment. Dear brethren, the house of God is here, for God is here in His sons. All who have the Spirit dwelling in them are amongst the sons of God who make a dwelling-place for God here where He can put Himself in touch with men; where what He is can be expressed and an immense service be carried on, because His representatives are here. The day we live in is a day of small things outwardly; we Christians are only a little handful compared to the vast number of unbelievers in Christendom today, even counting all saints wherever they may be - we know not where they are, He knows them, He knows every one that belongs to God. There is not a son unknown to Him, and it is a pity when a man has been taken up in this way and yet does not enter into the character of blessing God has given him. We must help such, and to help them, we must pray.
I read that passage in Timothy to show you one great characteristic of the house of God: it is the house of prayer, and the house of prayer for all nations. We are meant to think of every one. God works where He pleases, He is not tied to this place or that, and as long as we are here God
would have us make it manifest that God is not the enemy of man, but the very reverse, that He would have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth. That is what is in His mind for all men. The Lord Jesus could not have a different mind from that, and so He gave Himself a ransom for all. It is a wonderful thought: He gave Himself as 'a propitiatory ransom' (Greek antilutron) in behalf of all. Any one may have it, and, when he has it, he finds he has a substitute; he finds that what the Lord Jesus did was actually to take his cause up before God and clear him for ever. But as a propitiatory ransom, He has given Himself in behalf of (Greek huper) all. Scripture does not say 'instead of all'. As to the actual result, the ransom was instead of (Greek anti) many. When you come to the substitutionary side, another thought is expressed by the Spirit - He came "to give his life a ransom for [instead of] many;" but when you think of the other side, the universal side, this grand propitiatory ransom has been so given that any one may come and take advantage of it, and whoever does so will find himself in the blessing.
Do not let us have too limited thoughts, therefore, in preaching the gospel, and in moving amongst men. We have nothing whatever to do with God's election in the way of settling whom He has chosen and whom He has not. Nor has He so chosen as to make it useless for us to evangelise universally. He has kept these secrets in His own bosom - how the two dovetail He only knows, but they do. So there is no one, however rough, however unlikely, that you may not evangelise and encourage. You are here for that purpose.
Now what is a son? We never can solve that question without looking at Christ. Christ came here and set forth in His own Person in becoming man, what it is to God to have a Son. But He did not remain alone. God had thoughts in eternity which He intended to work out in time, and carry through into the future eternity. He had the thought of this One becoming man, and being found here in manhood, and that blessed Man in the most holy conceivable liberty with God - and far more than simple liberty, with the holy privilege of constant approach to God. But along with that is the thought of being His delight, for God has in Him His delight. In the whole creation He could not find such delight, but He found it in His Son. But His thoughts could not stop there. He had to be made perfect; that is, reach the full thought of God as to man through sufferings. Why had He to suffer? So that God might bring many sons to glory. He would only have that one Son otherwise; but that He might bring many sons to glory, He made the Leader of their salvation perfect through sufferings. Untold sufferings! No one could gauge those sufferings but God Himself; and He so constituted the holy body which He prepared for Him, that He could die. He is the same Person now, but in a new condition; in the condition which He now is in, death is impossible. But He was once here in flesh - God's dear Son was in touch with this groaning creation; and you may be sure nobody ever groaned like Christ. You may be sure He had His own wonderful way of expressing the groans of this poor unhappy world to God. You know what the answer will be - we will look at that presently, perhaps - but of course the first thought was the pleasure
of God found in Him; and then that God should make Him perfect through sufferings, in order that He might have many like Him.
Now that is our study - dear brethren, young and old - Christ is our study. What is He really like? What was He like? What kind of life did He live? What were His thoughts? What were His ways? What was His spirit? Thank God, we have the four gospels that we may learn these things, and the Holy Spirit to open them out. Of course, at the time God alone saw His true beauty, and He did so fully and perfectly. What satisfaction He brought to God! How wonderful to think of Him in the poorest circumstances, and yet always content; not a murmur ever escaping His lips from first to last. Blessed Lord! What a Son God had in Him, had He not? Then how trustworthy He was! There was nothing unreal or false in Him like we find in ourselves.
I might have turned to the story of Jacob for the thought of the house of God, because that side is needful. It was long before he really came to Bethel so as to enjoy the thought of God's dwelling. He got the light of it the first night he slept away from home, and said, "How dreadful is this place" (Genesis 28:17). He was not then at home in it, but he determined that, if God did this and that, then his father's God and his grandfather's God should be his God; but it does not speak of God being his God at that time. Then he would build an altar in that spot and so on. It was many a long year before he came to it, and he only came to it after great disgrace had come upon his house, but he did come to it after the idols were put away. Then when he did
come to it, oh! how God blessed him, and how grandly he came out for God as Israel, a prince of God!
Now that history is more or less true of all of us, in regard to our arriving at the thought of God for us, as to our being His house. We have to learn in Jacob that we need the same God, the God of Jacob, for our refuge. Shifty, deceitful man as he was, going his own way to get things, there was nothing very much in his life at that time to admire, and many of us would say, 'Nor is there in mine'. The dear younger brethren may think the older brethren can look back with great satisfaction on their lives. I am afraid many of us can look back and can see Jacob pretty clearly, when we consider our past lives; but yet not without hope, for we know that God's thought for us is Bethel, the house of God. He would have us find ourselves at home where God dwells amongst His sons, and realise that we are His sons. Oh, it is very fine to arrive at the thoughts of God! Think now, God had these thoughts, about having many sons, before the world was; then time came in and the fall of man, and then the entry of Jesus into the world: "When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, come of woman, come under law, that he might redeem those under law, that we might receive sonship" (Galatians 4:4, 5). Now you see what God had in His mind, that there should be many like His dear Son - that is what He came for. Is it possible that anyone could be a pleasure to God, as Jesus was? Yes, thank God, in our measure we may be - there was no measure with Him, of course.
But God is moving today, and the present moment, the present earth, is the grand ground for God's work. All over the world God is working, doing a magnificent work in the soul of every believer, not only preparing this one and that one so that he can have the Spirit, but when the Spirit has come, moving their hearts in regard to Christ. The Holy Spirit knows that He is the Spirit of sonship, and nothing in me that is not the spirit of a son will ever do for the Holy Spirit. He must reduce all that is contrary in me, He must break it down. He must make me refuse this and that; He will not have me in any way different from what a son should be; that is surely the work of the Spirit of God at the present moment - a most important work. Many of us wish we had given more attention early in life to that word, "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which ye have been sealed for the day of redemption" (Ephesians 4:30). The Spirit is very easily grieved - our foolish ways, our devoting ourselves to pleasure when others are devoting themselves to the Lord, and our allowing what is false and unreal - all that is a grief to the Spirit, and it results in the lengthening out of the time before we really come out as the sons of God. The sons of God, if they really come out in truthfulness here, come out in the likeness of Christ. That is why I spoke of prayer; I go back to it again now.
The house of God is the house of prayer, and men are encouraged to pray everywhere. A man may pray publicly everywhere. The woman is to be more quiet in that way. The brother can pray publicly in the meeting; the sister can follow the prayer, make it her own, and be in the spirit of prayer the whole time. No one can say what an immense
advantage a silent sister is when she is in the spirit of prayer, when the ministry is given or when the gospel is being preached, yea, and when we are together in a prayer meeting. Brothers little know the help they get from prayerful sisters, though no sound is heard, except the 'Amen' they are encouraged to say to the brothers' prayers. Now, seeing things are so, do let us be more earnest in prayer. Think of the vast numbers of young people there are on the way to fellowship. What prevents them seeking fellowship? They feel their own weakness and sinfulness; many of them say, 'Fellowship is not for me; I am such a poor feeble creature'. They need our prayers. Suppose we took to heart more the great temptations that the youthful amongst us are exposed to specially: who knows what victories might be the result for these dear young ones! How they would get delivered earlier, and how gladly they would come to us and say, 'I too would like to break bread! I feel the Lord would have me so to do'. Because, when you are free in spirit, you very soon find out that the Lord wants you to be with others who are free, and to remember Him in His death.
So the thought of prayer is a very far-reaching one, is it not, brethren? We may pray for the gospel and for the saints in all lands, the vast majority of whom, not walking with us, are greatly hindered by their surroundings and associations. Yet the Lord has them where we might not expect to find them. It was delightful to me to find the other day a Catholic, to whom I spoke of how well known every true Catholic was in heaven - every Catholic that truly trusts Jesus and believes in Him and answers to His love,
all such, I said, are well known in heaven. His reply was, 'Yes, there is only Christ'. Thus, whatever the darkness of his surroundings, he had this light, that there was no one for him really like Christ, and evidently he knew Him. Yes, and you may be sure there are many such hidden away, and we ought to find them. Is it not partly through our negligence that we do not find them? I know how negligent I have been, and it is sad, because, you see, I cannot begin life over again. Dear younger ones, beware of negligence! You little know what opportunities you have, and if the sons of God are in a place, it is to make God known there. God dwells in His house.
The sisters have a wonderful influence by their quiet demeanour, so different from the women of the world; by their quiet way of dressing, and so on, such a contrast to the world. It is not that they wish to dress so as to call attention to themselves, but they are suitably attired, and their quiet spirit has a great influence amongst the neighbours around, but, above all, in their own house. The Lord can use such in the home in a wonderful way. What a help such are to their husbands, to their children! How remarkably the Lord has given to the woman a special influence over the children; so that they are early taught the things of Christ. Almost the first thing they hear is the name 'Jesus', as the mother, with the child in her arms, constantly turns to the Lord Jesus. That affects a child very early, and in that way the children get the immense advantage of those who are in the love of God, who are the sons of God, who are in the house of God.
Then I would speak of the goodness of His house - oh, how wide the subject is, is it not? May the Lord guide me
as to what He would specially call attention to. The kindest people ever known have been the sons of God. I learn that in Christ Himself, nobody ever was so kind as Christ. He brought kindness here amongst men in a way never known before in a man, and then He left it here in the Spirit, so that you and I might be kind to the most miserable objects, kind to anyone, but specially so to the household of faith. "Let us do good towards all, and specially towards those of the household of faith" (Galatians 6:10). Many a poor miserable house has opened to the gospel, owing to the thoughtful act of some kind saint who, as a true son of God, entered that house and let them know that God is good, in a practical way, and that God is kind. Now this extension, so to speak, of God in the world is most important. I do hope that my brethren in this country - I would like to encourage you, we all would - will see the immense advantage of God's sons being set here, but we must be careful that we do not belie God. We do not learn in Jesus anything that belies God - the very opposite; His beautiful transparent spirit was most evident - "Altogether that which I also say to you" (John 8:25).
Now nothing but that will do for you or me. The Holy Spirit is as transparent as Christ, and, if He has His way with me, He will allow nothing that is shady, nothing that is not truly transparent, because now is the time when not only the sons are being prepared for glory, but the holy city is being built. You know how transparency marks specially that holy city - transparent men and women, transparent young people even. How one knows one can trust the work of God even a youth who is governed by the Spirit, you know he will not tell a lie, you know he will not deceive
you. You can trust even a child like that when the Spirit is there, and that is really what brings out what the child is; you find that, though brought up first of all under the holy influence of others, he has gone further than that, he himself becomes like that blessed One, and there is a holiness, a separation, marking him, there is a reality manifest, even in a child. How blessed it is that the work of God is going on in that way!
Now, God will do nothing in heaven in the way of fitting us to be His sons; all the fitting morally for sonship is done here, for He has taken us up in grace because we are sons in the purpose and gift of God. He has given us His Spirit, but then He moves, breaking down everything that is contrary to Christ and putting Christ in instead. There was one dear man in whom the full work of God was seen more quickly than in others. I refer to the apostle Paul: "God ... was pleased to reveal his Son in me, that I may announce him as glad tidings among the nations" (Galatians 1:15, 16) - a man came amongst the nations who was in a most remarkable way the reflex of Christ Himself. His ways, his demeanour, everything about him, commanded confidence, and men listened to him when they would not listen to others. It was the marvellous power of the Spirit in which he lived and moved amongst men; he was a very son; nobody ought to have been astonished if in one moment he had been clothed with the glory of Christ, his body changed - at any moment he was ready for it. Are we? Is the work of God complete in us? Well, you may think it strange, but I am glad I am not dead, for I do feel the Lord will do more in me than He has done yet. I desire that - you do too.
The Holy Spirit will finish the work, but this earth is the place for the work of God. It is very fine what He is doing, and in that way we become representative of God. "The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit" (Romans 5:5), and we learn to answer to that love. We love Him and we learn to love one another, and when we do, I think we get to that thought, "Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there" (Genesis 35:1). We know the house of God as we never knew it before. God dwells in us, and we in God.
Is that not a lovely house aspect? When love has its way, how different we are in all our ways with one another; when we dwell in love, God can dwell in us, and does. In that way, though "No one has seen God at any time" (John 1:18), God becomes manifest through the dear brethren who walk in love. So, dear brethren, get the thought that God must have blessed beings on earth at this present time, His sons. He must be able to delight in us, He must find us delighting in Him. He would find us near Him every morning, and then going out from His presence to express God in the world. Think of all the sons of God in Ireland going in to God every morning, and then coming out to tell poor Ireland what God is! Who can tell what the result of that would be here, or in any country over the world? That is what God would encourage us to do, because His house is here, and we are learning what characterises it; what righteousness is; what holiness is; and what love is. We learn to be right, we get delivered from the confusion and we come into a house of peace. Wonderful peace belongs to God's house! The peace of God is there, the sons of God
learn to walk in peace, to live in peace, and that is a wonderful testimony to the world around.
You may wonder why I read all that in Romans 8, but it is because of what is coming in. The day is coming when the sons of God will be revealed; yes, the sons of God are to be revealed. What will be the effect of the revelation? Every groan will be hushed, creation will groan no more. It "expects the revelation of the sons of God". Could not some of those groans be hushed now? Yes, if we were more truly sons. If we were in great power here as sons of God, what comfort we should bring to those around! Many a groan would be hushed, many a sigh would get its answer in the beautiful way in which a son of God moves and acts here amongst men. But this world is the sphere of operations; God is preparing you and me for that grand future when we shall come out of heaven to hush the groans of this troubled world. We shall soon come to it. When the world has come to it that it can live no more, when the state of things after the rapture of the saints is so bad that there seems to be no hope, no doubt many will be awakened to groan to God to do for them what men cannot. Then will come out the holy city, for then will come Christ out of heaven, and very soon the misery of this world will go, and instead of a groaning creation will be a creation delighting through and through in God. What a change it will be!
Now if that is so, and it is, you see the importance of what God does in us now. Suppose there is confusion amongst us believers now, how are we going to remove the confusion in the future day? The assembly, as the holy city, is coming out of heaven to remove confusion, and it will do
it. The world is a system of confusion - Babel. Do we add to the confusion by our naughty ways? May God deliver us if anything like that is amongst us. May God come in for every saint, so as to produce the blessed result that He has really got a son. "Israel is my son, my firstborn ... . Let my son go, that he may serve me" (Exodus 4:22, 23) was the word God told Moses to say to Pharaoh. God's Son is here in us - the many sons. What does He want of us? He wants us to be free from every bit of bondage that might produce fear, to serve Him. No one ever served like a son. There is something very fine in seeing a business where a man has his sons with him in the business, and he has got to old age, and people are saying, 'Oh, that does not matter; his sons are like him! He was trustworthy, so are his sons'. If God's Son is no longer here, yet God has many sons here, and He loves to have trustworthy sons who can serve Him and be ready for any kind of work that He may give.
Then, too, there is a worshipping spirit about a son, and also the spirit of prayer. We learn that in Christ. We have been hearing during these meetings how Jesus was a Man of prayer, how constantly He was in prayer. That is what God looks for with us all, prayer in secret, and prayer in public. I am reminded of an incident. Two boys, cousins, were together for the holidays, and one day one of them suddenly opened the drawing-room door and finding his cousin there said, 'Whatever are you doing here?' 'Oh', was the reply, 'I was only having a little time with God'. The influence of that word told its tale, till the cousin himself delighted also in God and in the service of God. Those moments of private prayer - you can take them
anywhere, in the fields, or anywhere that you can be alone - they are absolutely necessary if we are going to come into the thoughts of God in regard to a son. A son who does not pray! Is that your thought of a son? Why, it is one of the first thoughts of a son, that he prays. You learn it in Jesus.
Then think of the wonderful way in which Jesus delighted in God from moment to moment! Not only that God delighted in Him, but whatever the sorrow here, He had His delight in God. Nobody ever passed through pressure like Christ, but all through the pressure up to Calvary, and even when forsaken of God, He never gave up His delight in God, even when He cried out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me" (Psalm 22:1). If you read the psalm, you will find that the prophecy goes on to other thoughts that are not expressed in the New Testament. "And thou art holy, thou that dwellest amid the praises of Israel" (verse 3). He, so to speak, appealed to God publicly to find any reason in Him for forsaking Him. Of course there was none. And it was uttered with a loud voice, in order that we might learn how holy that blessed One was. It was for us He suffered and was forsaken and drank to the last drop the cup of the wrath of God. It was all for us, that we might never know the wrath of God, but only enjoy His love.
May God help us to consider this great thought of the house of God here on earth and all the advantages of it. It is a house of piety. Pious people are not so very numerous, it may be; pious people bring God into everything; piety makes room for God. Nobody was so pious as Christ. No wonder He was received up in glory, for He was the
embodiment of piety. God was in that blessed One, God was in all His thoughts. Now that is open for us; whatever our thoughts may be, there should be no thought which is unsuitable to God or which will leave Him out. The Lord will help us, and I believe the result will be a greater and brighter testimony all over the world in this closing moment, if we only rise up in the moral dignity that belongs to sons, all of us, as Gideon's brethren, like "the sons of a king" (Judges 8:18). There never has been royalty like that which is found in Christ, and in the sons that God is bringing to glory. Oh, the nobility that attaches to the poorest man if he is a son of God and walks accordingly! He may be breaking stones on the road, and aged (I have personally known such), and one has felt that if ever there was nobility in England, it was in those stonebreakers. They knew how to go in to God with an intimacy that astonished me, and they knew how to come out from God and express Him in the villages they lived in. May God help every one of us in these things, for Jesus Christ's sake.
Belfast, April 1929
Isaiah 40:1, 2; 2 Corinthians 1:3, 4
We have already had before us today the thought of service, and it is on my heart to speak of a service which lies open to every believer. You will have gathered doubtless from the scriptures I have read that the word 'comfort' is in my mind. Every one of us must feel the increasing need amongst God's people for a ministry which brings in comfort, a ministry which will establish and which will comfort their hearts. Indeed, one of the earliest desires of the apostle Paul in writing to the Thessalonian believers was that they might "encourage one another, and build up each one the other, even as also ye do" (1 Thessalonians 5:11).
This need for comfort found early expression amongst the people of God. It will, I believe, find greater expression as the days become darker and increasingly difficult. It is said of Lemech that at the birth of Noah he said, "This one shall comfort us concerning our work and concerning the toil of our hands" (Genesis 5:29). The saints in that early day, feeling the pressure of what was around, the curse being heavy upon the earth, looked on in the fervent longings of their souls to the coming of One who should bring in rest and comfort. Need I remind you of the time in which Noah lived - this early comforter of the saints - how he moved and how he built in times and under conditions similar to our own? In his day there were abnormal men; it is said, "In
those days were the giants on the earth" (Genesis 6:4). A giant spirit, alas! is abroad today in the earth; there is hero-worship on every hand and men of renown. People of the world speak of their great ones, whether politically, or socially, or religiously. They are not ashamed to use superlative language in the description of earth's great ones or their activities. The unholy climax of all those activities, the apex of man's greatness as on that plane will be, as we know, the man of sin.
What are we to do in the presence of all that speaks of this giant spirit abroad? We should reserve our superlative language for Christ, the One who was marked, as it is said, by the mind to go down. Let us refuse in this day of man's greatness to employ any such language in the description of that man. Let us be like the one spoken of in the Song of Songs who, when challenged as to her lover, describes Him in befitting language; she is concerned to speak, as one may say, in the superlative degree. She says, "His head is as the finest gold; ... His mouth is most sweet: Yea, he is altogether lovely" (Song of Songs 5:11 - 16).
So Noah, this early comforter of the saints, is marked by one outstanding feature: that he walked with God. It says "This is the history of Noah. Noah was a just man, perfect amongst his generations: Noah walked with God" (Genesis 6:9). He was not obsessed with what was around; he was not deterred from pursuing a path of righteousness because of the influx of man's greatness, but he was perfect. He stands forth distinctively perfect in his generations; and it is said, he "walked with God". I wish to emphasise at this time that the measure in which we
comfort one another in these last days is the measure in which we are each prepared to walk with God, for behind this ministry of comfort there lies a wealth of divine experience - experience with divine Persons, as walking in secret with God. Noah, thank God, was not the only comforter of the old dispensation; there were many of them, and they were concerned to speak to the heart of others.
It is said in Isaiah 40, "Speak to the heart of Jerusalem". May I plead for that in relation to our intercourse one with another, in relation to any service with which the Lord in His goodness may entrust us? Do we make an appeal to the heart? Do we speak to the hearts of God's people? Do we appeal to that which is the seat, so to speak, of every emotion, or are we content to address the minds by imparting information about divine things or divine Persons? I make bold to say that if we are concerned to appeal to the hearts of God's people, there will be response; if we merely appeal to the minds there will be no response.
I pass on to Joseph, who was another great comforter. It is said of him that when suspicion came into the hearts of his brethren, when they doubted him after Jacob their father's death, he spoke consolingly to them; he spoke words of kindness to them. He would disarm them as to the path that lay before them; he would pour into their hearts a precious ministry of comfort so that they might know how to confide in him, and to go forward with every suspicion eliminated from their minds and hearts.
I refer also to Hezekiah in relation to this ministry of comfort. It is said of him in that day of wondrous
recovery, that he "spoke consolingly to all the Levites" (2 Chronicles 30:22). Have we had such on our hearts - the Levites? Have we been so pre-occupied in our service that we have forgotten the Levites? I well remember one of the earliest longings that I had in regard of divine service. It was that one might have part in that very privileged service by constantly praying for those who serve. I commend that to you, dear young brother or sister. I believe promotion lies on that line, the line of being enabled to speak comfortingly, consolingly, to the Levites, a service that is greatly needed amongst us, and a service that is to be coveted by us. Who knows what lies behind all the precious ministry, all the activities, and all the exercises that are given through the Levites? Shall we be, as it were, the beneficiaries at their hands, receiving of their spiritual wealth, and never be concerned about speaking words of comfort and words of encouragement to them?
It is said that the result of Hezekiah's speaking consolingly to the Levites was that they held a feast seven days, and such was the joy and greatness of that feast that they decided to hold another feast for another period of seven days. Then when Hezekiah, this great comforter of the Levites, recognised what joy there was in Israel, we are told that he gave a thousand bullocks and seven thousand sheep. He was not too great, though he was a king, to think of the Levites who served in relation to the heart of God. It is said in 2 Chronicles 32:6 that he also spoke consolingly to the captains of war. He is concerned now, having secured the praise and the service of God, as to the conflict, as to this impious enemy who would come within the gates; and
it is said he assembled the captains of war to him at the gate of the city and spoke consolingly to them. Have we had such in our minds? Have we wept with them? Have we sorrowed with those who have been concerned as to the maintenance of what is due to God, those who have had, as it were, the first hand in the conflict? Have we been near them in spirit? Have we prayed for them?
I remember an aged sister saying that one of her most privileged sights was to walk into a room where our beloved brother F.E.R. was, and to see him weeping - tears, priestly tears - the God-given outlet, in times of conflict for the truth. Such tears are put into God's bottle. Are we concerned as to this, that we support and speak consolingly to those who serve in the conflict? It is said the result of those words of consolation was that the people depended upon the words of Hezekiah the king.
Following upon that I want to show what a ministry of comfort may bring in among us in the last days. It is said that Isaiah the prophet and Hezekiah the king joined in prayer. What a sight for God! to see the prophet and the king praying together and crying to heaven in priestly intercession in relation to the people of God - the people to whom Isaiah was instructed to say, "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak to the heart of Jerusalem". What is this ministry of comfort that Isaiah the prophet would bring in? It is the introduction of the true Noah, the One upon whom Israel will lean, the One for whom the earth and the heavens wait during the time of the groaning creation, the advent of the true Noah who shall bring in rest, repose and comfort. "Every valley shall be
raised up, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low ... And the glory of Jehovah shall be revealed" (Isaiah 40:4, 5). What will mark that day, thank God, will be the feature that will delight the heart of every lover of Jesus that "Jehovah alone shall be exalted" (Isaiah 2:11).
I desire now to refer to the way this ministry of comfort has come down to us in our day. I need not remind you of the way in which the Lord Jesus came into the synagogue at Nazareth. He reads, and as He reads He would leave the impression upon all that He had come in at a suited moment with a ministry of comfort. He said He had come to bind up the broken-hearted. Is there not need for such a word today? Is there not room amongst men, amongst the saints of God, for these words - the gospel preached to the poor, the broken-hearted healed, the captives set at liberty? And as He moves here and there He is concerned as to bringing rest and comfort into the hearts of those to whom He draws near. He would have us restful. He says, "Learn from me; for I am meek and lowly in heart" (Matthew 11:29). That is the kind of Person who is able to administer comfort, who is able to bring in, in times of pressure, sorrow, and tribulation, just the word of comfort that is needed.
One loves to think of Paul, that great comforter of the saints, standing in relation to the whole assembly. He is concerned that the saints should be comforted. Pardon the repetition of the word, but I feel how essential this feature is in the closing days. We have abundant light; we have among us, as few other Christians have, the most treasured things; we are privileged to hear the most profound and
blessed truths, but are we to be content to hear and never to pass on to others who compose part of Christ's assembly that which we have received? Paul himself stands in relation to all men. He had the desire to present every man perfect in Christ. What bowels of compassion he had, just like his Master. He passes on, having the care of all the assemblies, daily concerned that the saints be greatly comforted. He himself had in that early day of his conversion recognised comfort in a most marvellous way, and when he is subdued, he, who had once been the destroyer of God's people, so ministers comfort that we read, "The assemblies then throughout the whole of Judaea and Galilee and Samaria had peace, being edified and walking in the fear of the Lord, and were increased through the comfort of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 9:31). From that point his concern is, as it were, deepened. He had persecuted the assembly of God, he had been the destroyer of the saints; now he would fill up the time that was left - every moment of it, for it was night-and-day work with Paul - in holy endeavour to comfort the saints.
So, too, the Thessalonians in their early freshness needed the constant attention of a nursing father and a nursing mother, and he would send Timotheus to them. The very presence of Timotheus in a local gathering would ensure comfort for the saints. They had no room for him at Corinth. Paul says, "Now if Timotheus come, see that he may be with you without fear" (1 Corinthians 16:10), indicating that the tendency at Corinth would be to quench what had been divinely entrusted to Timothy. But at Thessalonica he is entrusted with the work, and Paul says he sent him there
in order that the saints might be comforted. Then it is said that he also hoped to send Timotheus to the Philippian saints. It is not now a question of early freshness; it is not now a juvenile company, but a company of believers well on the way to maturity - Philippian saints. Do we ever get beyond the need of comfort? What kind of vessel, what kind of keeper of the sheep is this to whom Paul would entrust the work of comforting those Philippian believers? He says, "For I have no one like-minded who will care with genuine feeling how ye get on" (Philippians 2:20). Oh! for more genuine feeling as to how the saints get on, not as to how much they may know, but a genuine concern for their soul-health.
Then this great comforter Paul is equally concerned about the Ephesians. He has in reserve Tychicus and he would send him in order that he might comfort their hearts, that the Ephesians might be acquainted with all that was happening to Paul, and that their own hearts might be greatly comforted. Likewise as to Colosse, Paul is concerned to know their state, and that he might comfort their hearts. It is not now the great apostle himself coming; it is not an official movement; it is Paul representatively; he sends this representative - Tychicus. He is to go to that local gathering, and find out their state and also to comfort their hearts.
One of the last acts of Paul, in relation to his line of service in comforting others, stood in relation to the comfort of those who were gathered around on that island after the shipwreck. That is one of the last recorded acts of this devoted servant of Christ. It is said that Paul himself gathered sticks. I know we have often read it, and that we
are acquainted with the scripture, but I make an appeal to every heart to reflect for one moment on the down-stooping of Christ that marked the beloved apostle, and the grace reflected in him, that he had seen in Christ. He himself is greatly concerned about the comfort of those who stood round during the time of the cold and rain, and it is said he gathered sticks. His objective was a fire that would comfort and warm the saints, and he knew that every effort of the enemy to frustrate it would find its full and final answer in the very fire that he himself would provide to warm the saints. He shakes off a viper, for the viper would destroy this minister of comfort among the saints. It is not said he killed it, but he shook it off into the fire.
I refer now to John, for the thought of comfort links up with John's ministry. He treats of the divine nature, and shows that we have wealth and power to deal with every difficulty, every problem that can arise in these difficult days. Jude speaks of certain men having crept in unawares. John says, "They went out from among us, but they were not of us" (1 John 2:19); they went out. The exposing power of John's ministry is such that evil cannot dwell where love is. The viper that would destroy those affections, that would militate against the warmth and comfort of the saints, can never exist in the presence of divine love amongst the saints. We have in John's ministry the most precious bulwark against all the unholy inroads of antichristian men today as they move about in this earth, and if John himself is confined to Patmos he moves out in an endeavour to comfort the saints, and says, "I John, your brother and fellow-partaker in the tribulation" (Revelation 1:9).
If he himself is restricted as to his movements, he refers to one whose movements are unrestricted, for he is like Paul, he leaves behind a keeper of the sheep. Paul leaves a Timothy to keep the sheep, to protect them on church lines and to comfort them in relation to the assembly and the affections proper to it. John, too, is concerned about his keeper, and in that connection he refers in the most touching way to Gaius. Gaius is found as one who has a house, and a house that is a home. What marks him, having the spirit of John, is that he is greatly concerned, not so much how the brethren come into his house, but the manner in which they go out. I commend that to you in all simplicity, that we should have deeper concern about the way in which the saints leave our houses. Are they, as those who have visited the house of Gaius, the better for having been in? Are they comforted? Have they received all this spiritual warmth which is contained in John's ministry? Are they sent forward in a manner worthy of God? John is greatly concerned about the family life of the saints. He would comfort the saints in that relation - that is, as the family of God. The family of God is left down here in a hostile world, and if the world loves its own, let us see to it on our part that we love our own, that in those family affections we should be concerned as to the outgoings of divine love.
One of the earliest, and certainly one of the sweetest impressions that one had of the saints in the path of separation, as first moving amongst them apart from the systems of men, was to go into a meeting where they were singing, 'Whom have we, Lord, but Thee?' (Hymn 427). I confess that it left upon my spirit an indelible impression. It
was no appeal made to the senses, no disorder, but waiting in simple dependence upon the movements of divine Persons. Another impression of which one would speak was that one had found a company where the Holy Spirit was free. May it be so to the end! Let us be preserved from the intrusions of man's mind, from the mere assertion of things as light, or the mere passing on of information. Let us see to it that we are content to wait upon the Lord Himself for guidance, and that in our deliberations together over the Holy Scriptures, and on every occasion when we are found together, we may leave room for the Holy Spirit. There is that left to us today, the comfort of the Holy Spirit, and one speaks of it with intense joy.
In closing I refer to Peter. Peter's great concern is to comfort the saints in relation to their kingdom sufferings. He leaves to Paul the line of the assembly, the one who was filling up that which was behind of the sufferings of Christ for His body's sake - the line of suffering, which, one feels ashamed to say, we touch so little. Peter's suffering stands in relation to the kingdom. We are to arm ourselves against every unholy intrusion of the flesh, forasmuch as Christ has suffered for us in the flesh. John's sufferings, I believe, stand in relation to the spirits of believers, as being found still in a hostile and antichristian system of things, but Peter is concerned about the souls of the saints. He says, "Abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul" (1 Peter 2:11). He is concerned about soul-health. He would have the saints prospering in their souls, and so he brings in a word of comfort in relation to any who may be suffering, suffering on the line of the kingdom, and his greatest and
deepest concern in view of his departure is that the saints might be greatly comforted. Would he leave the sheep without a keeper? Would he pass off without leaving the saints a precious legacy? I believe he leaves the legacy to us in the one whose salutation he speaks of when he says, "She that is elected with you in Babylon salutes you, and Marcus my son" (1 Peter 5:13). One has derived comfort from that thought, that in a place like Babylon you have Peter, shortly to put off his tabernacle, as he says, and you have Mark. Ah! we cannot do without the kingdom; we need to be maintained in the exercises relative to it; we need to be maintained in the joy and power of it. Let us never assume, God forbid! to rise so high that we forget the line of Peter's ministry relative to the kingdom, and so he speaks of "Marcus my son".
I would refer briefly for a moment to the legacy that Mark has left behind in the ordering of the Lord in his gospel. It has sometimes occurred to me that in Mark's gospel we have portrayed, more deeply than in any other, the feelings and sensibilities of Jesus. I believe that Mark was a man of deep feeling, and that, consequent upon his early failure, he would be in direct touch with divine Persons. When he is restored and strengthened, he is spoken of as being profitable for the ministry, and his gospel is a precious legacy handed on to us, a gospel in which the feelings and sensibilities of Jesus are treated of in a most delicate way by divine inspiration through "Marcus my son".
These were the thoughts that were on my heart, suggesting how the line of comfort may be continued by us
in a difficult and a dark day, and that one of our greatest concerns may be to "speak to the heart of Jerusalem". I leave one word with you in closing. "But our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and our God and Father, who has loved us, and given us eternal consolation and good hope by grace, encourage your hearts, and establish you in every good work and word" (2 Thessalonians 2:16, 17).
Barnet, June 1929
Luke 1:30 - 32; Luke 2:19, 21, 27, 30; Revelation 1:17; 22: 16
The simple thoughts that are in my mind centre around the name of Jesus. While they are simple, as becomes one's measure, one recognises and desires that the Spirit of God might give enlargement both to the speaker as he speaks, and to the hearers as they listen. What should mark speaking about divine things is not only that God furnishes what is to be spoken, but that those who speak enter into what is spoken in true affection and sympathy. Psalm 45 opens with, "My heart is welling forth with a good matter: I say what I have composed touching the king. My tongue is the pen of a ready writer". I feel sure that when the heart is full, God will provide the words. I would rather have a full heart than a mind stocked with facts or information, or even the ability to quote scripture, for it is out of a full heart that the tongue becomes as the pen of a ready writer - not a ready speaker, but a ready writer, for all man's thoughts have to be controlled in order to be kept within the range of what is written. Our minds are never given liberty to travel outside of that, but within that region the tongue becomes as the pen of a ready writer, and what subject is more precious, or more blessed, than that of Jesus. No measure is too simple or too small to compose something about Him. It
is not what we have learned from another, but what we have composed as touching the king.
We have been considering together the supreme blessedness of the thought that God has come down to man, that He has brought Himself within man's compass or range. God is very great, and man compared with Him is very small, and if God in His greatness is going to bring Himself thus before the notice of man in his smallness, what down-stooping it involves. There was no other but Jesus who could travel that way; no other who could set God forth, for He not only represented God and declared God, but He was God. What a subject for contemplation, to consider the way He travelled and the point to which He stooped in order to bring to us the knowledge of God!
I have turned to Luke's gospel for two reasons. One is that that gospel presents the moral order in which we apprehend things; the other is that the gospels, in general, furnish us with the most intimate thoughts about the person of Jesus. The epistles speak much of His official glories. They unfold to us the varied and glorious offices He has taken up in order to make the will of God effective in us, and in order to meet the need of His people and to support them in the presence of God. But the gospels produce the spirit of adoration, for we are brought close to Jesus as He moves and speaks to men. Luke presents Him as beginning at the lowest point and being carried to the highest point; for in his second discourse - the Acts - where he continues to compose as touching the king, he tells us the disciples "were gazing into heaven, as he was going" (Acts 1:10), showing not only that the Lord had gone to the highest
point, but that the gaze of His people had been directed to that spot. Just think what a range of contemplation there is for our souls between these two points - a Babe lying in a manger, and a blessed Man having passed through death in triumph, carried up into heaven! I understand that the thought of carrying is that there is support; that is, the affections are intelligently engaged as loving the Person, and as apprehending where His pathway leads.
I begin at the point in the scripture where the angel appears to Mary with the salutation, "Hail, thou favoured one! the Lord is with thee" (Luke 1:28). The Lord was with her to support her in receiving a marvellous communication, a communication so great indeed that without support she would have been overwhelmed. She was to bear a son and call His name Jesus; that is the first name indicated by the angel; the second name is that He should be called the Son of the Highest. There is nothing more lowly than Jesus, and nothing greater than the Son of the Highest, so that, as reading Luke's account, we are to carry these two suggestions of surpassing lowliness and surpassing greatness combined in one Person. In down-stooping grace He who was, and is, God, came into manhood at the lowest point, at the point, shall I say, where there is the least likelihood that anyone should be dismayed, bearing no external evidences of official glory and dignity - a babe lying in a manger. That was the sign to the shepherds (chapter 2: 12); they should find the babe lying in a manger.
The suggestion carries two thoughts, as I see it: one that the manger represents a lower point in down-stooping
grace than is seen in the mother. The mother would suggest the reality of His humanity, born of a woman, a holy yet real humanity, but the manger is descent in grace below man's ordinary circumstances altogether. The other thought is that whatever distinction attaching to Mary as favoured above women, it was not to be confused or merged with the distinction attaching to the Babe, called the Son of the Highest. When Mary and Joseph are referred to at the same time as is the Babe, the Babe is said to be "lying in the manger". We do not get the thought of the Babe being carried by a mother; that would have been what is natural, and God is developing here what is spiritual. The first person recorded as receiving the Babe in his arms is Simeon. He carried the Babe. Think of it! What a subject for contemplation! He had been waiting long for Him; the waiting would suggest the preparation, for no one could have such a holy privilege without moral preparation. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel; those arms, so to speak, had been prepared, they had been strengthened by God that he might carry the child Jesus, so he said, "Lord, now thou lettest thy bondman go, according to thy word, in peace; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation". There was nothing more in life for Simeon; he had reached the consummation, the goal, the end for which he had been waiting. He could now depart in peace, without an anxious thought, for he had seen God's salvation.
The next point I wish to notice is that while the name of Jesus had been indicated to Mary in this gospel, and to Joseph in Matthew's gospel, there was a period of eight days elapsing before the name was given. You will notice
they were to call His name Jesus. While it came from God by means of the angel, they were to call His name Jesus. In that period we are told Mary kept these things in her mind and pondered them in her heart. Eight days of keeping in mind; eight days of pondering in heart, ere that holy name can be called. How it suggests the necessity of meditation, and the prayerful consideration of these divine blessed realities, before the name of Jesus can be spoken! It cannot be taken up on unsanctified lips, it cannot be taken where the heart is untouched and the mind unfilled; it is too precious, too holy, too marvellously great; so the period of pondering comes in before the name of Jesus is given by men.
I now refer to another name called over Him, in chapter 3, where the heaven was opened and a voice came out of heaven, "Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I have found my delight" (verse 22). Only God could give Him that name; only God could say, My beloved Son. He does not stand in that relation to any other but God. That is His great distinction in manhood; He is called the beloved Son. No angel could give Him that name; only the voice of God coming out of an opened heaven could declare a name so sacred and so marvellous as the "beloved Son". It represents, I understand, what that Person is to God in manhood; but the name of Jesus represents what He is to every one of His people, in that down-stooping, lowly, but blessed pathway that His feet marked out in the movements of His love. It is as Jesus that He has come into our hearts, as Jesus that He has made Himself indispensable and precious to every one of us.
The name Jesus is not so much what is official, although that underlies it, but rather what is personal; and every one of His saints is marked by a personal link with Him as Jesus. Even little children take that name upon their lips; it does not dismay. It stands for the way that blessed divine Person has taken that He might secure possession of our hearts. I will give you an illustration of how it works in the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. You will recall that as he was journeying to Damascus, a light shone out of heaven and a voice was heard saying, "Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute me?" and Saul said, "Who art thou, Lord?" Lord is a title of authority; it represents what is official and great, but the answer that came back was, "I am Jesus" (Acts 9:4, 5). He would not overwhelm that man, lying with his face on the ground, by speaking of titles of dignity and glory, though every title of eminence belongs to Him, but Oh! the comfort poured into that wounded heart by that name, Jesus: "I am Jesus". What could we do without Him? How could we walk a single day without that Person? How could we ever come into the presence of God in all His greatness, without Jesus? We should be overwhelmed, we could not stand it, we could not support it apart from Jesus. The blessedness of the presence of God, and indeed heaven itself, is only possible for creatures such as we are because of Him - the One who came into manhood, marked by this lowly grace, who drew near to sinners, who did not overwhelm them, but attracted the lowly and the outcast - Jesus, our precious, adorable Saviour.
Before I pass on, I should just like to make this remark, that Scripture emphasises, in regard to every
critical moment of our history, that we are to be with Jesus. In the epistle to the Hebrews we read of many sons being brought to glory; have you ever thought how we are going to remain in the presence of the glory, in the effulgence, in the shining out of all that God is? You could not support it apart from Jesus; and so we read, "We see Jesus;" we see Him "crowned with glory and honour" (Hebrews 2:9). What makes it possible to contemplate being in the glory is that Jesus is there; He is there, and we shall never, never be apart from Him. When God ushers us into these eternal conditions, we shall never lose sight of Him, we shall never lose the sense of His presence, support, and nearness. There will never be a moment when we could lose that, for we shall always need Him. We shall need Him in heaven, we shall need Him in glory, even as we need Him here and now; in a different way perhaps, for now we need all the condescending gentleness of His grace to deal with us and to help us through this scene. But we shall need Him then, for Oh! how great is God, how marvellously great! The greatness of God has been much impressed upon my soul of late. What a real thing, what a solemn thing it is for men to be taken into the immediate presence of God! I could not contemplate such a possibility without the deepest dismay, apart from the thought that Jesus is there - the One whom we have learnt and known in our condition of weakness and need. He is there, and He is there to support us. In His face the glory of God shines, and apart from His support we could never remain in the presence of God.
Now I pass on to what is presented in the passages I read from the Revelation, for there, in a different setting
and through another writer, we get the same thoughts that I have tried very briefly to suggest from the gospel by Luke. In the opening verse which I read we find the writer falling at His feet as dead. I want to ask everyone in this room, every believer, Have you ever fallen at His feet as dead? You will never get a true conception of the greatness of Christ apart from that experience. Had we known such an experience in reality, there would be less familiarity with us when we speak to the Lord, less formal repetition, and less activity when we are out of communion. The passage suggests how great the Lord is; only God could give us at once the thought of supreme greatness and supreme lowliness and gentleness in one Person; only God could do that. The one who saw Him in His official dignity and glory standing in the midst of the seven lamps, prepared to move amongst the assemblies to use His discerning eye, to look underneath the surface and to expose what was there, was affected so deeply that he fell at His feet as dead. Such is the greatness of Christ! And then the book goes on to unfold how God is going to take things up in a day to come. One gathers from such a book marvellous impressions of the greatness of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is going to intervene in the world and bring great things to pass, such things as have never happened in the world's history before. We read of events that make the heart of man tremble and fear, for they are marvellous indeed, and as we read through the book we get this conception, that that blessed Person is able to deal with everything in the world. As we look at the world today, we may get the impression that it is a conquering system, for it goes on from one step of
progress to another, from one invention to another, and there seems to be, as men think, no limit to what the mind of man will eventually accomplish. But as we read this book we get an impression of the greatness of Christ, and that He is able to deal with it all.
It is possible that as we read it there might perhaps unconsciously come into our souls a sense of distance, because He is so great, and fills such high offices, and is marked by such dignity, and power, and distinction. But the book closes with that precious word, "I Jesus". To those who read He is still that same Person; to hearts that adoringly would follow Him through the great movements recorded in the book, He is still "Jesus". He will not allow any sense of distance to come between Himself and those who love Him; and so He presents Himself in that blessed way, bringing in that wonderful word, "I Jesus". Oh! what does that recall? It recalls all that He is to our hearts as known in the wonders of His grace; it recalls One well-known through all life's history - "I Jesus". And then He adds further what is well worth noting, "I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify". There are angelic activities at this moment in the assemblies to testify to Him. He is the same Jesus; it is in that character that He has sent His angel that our hearts might be comforted and our souls supported by the sweet and blessed sense that He who, in the greatness of His person, is God, has become a Man. It is in manhood He has gained our affections, and He is going to remain in manhood for ever. He came out of eternity, out of conditions into which we cannot look or penetrate or understand, but He has come into time. He came as a Babe;
He came into our hearts in this precious way and He remains a Man; He goes back into eternity a Man - "I Jesus".
Well, as I said at the beginning, I had on my mind the simple desire to speak of Jesus. I hope everyone in this company has a link with Him; and that there has been in your life that period of pondering, of contemplation, giving the sense that what is in Him is so great that it can fill your mind and heart for time and eternity, so that in some measure you are taking your part in the carrying and maintaining of the testimony of God, for things have to be supported today. God is working through His people and by His people. He is not seen in any other way; He is working morally and has confined His activities in this dispensation to His people. What is of Christ needs support: it needs arms, like those of Simeon, that have been waiting, it needs that readiness to go, to depart, to make way for Him, so that, as John the baptist said, "He must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3:30). It needs all that. As we contemplate the great events of one's life, possibly going into death (what a solemn moment that is to one; even for the believer it is an intensely solemn thing to die), our comfort is that Jesus died. He went that way; and we could not go that way without being overwhelmed, had He not gone, and did He not take us by the hand as we go. And again if we take the thought of weeping, for the life of a man of God today is marked by much weeping, well, Jesus wept. What a contemplation! Jesus weeping. Think of who He is, and what He is, and what He has come to do and how He is going to fill all things! The One who is going to fill all
things is the One who wept - "Jesus wept". If we think of going into the glory, for God is going to take us there, how could we contemplate such supreme blessedness as being near to God in all the shining out of His glory, apart from Jesus? We cannot do without Him; He has come into our hearts and into our lives, and we cannot let Him go.
I trust that every heart here is detaining Him; He loves to be detained, He loves to be constrained, for to detain one is an evidence of true desire. May our hearts be filled with true desire towards that blessed Person, for God has His own marvellous way of working in us, and with us, so that when He has finished His work we shall pass into heaven, absolutely satisfied with Christ. We shall be in correspondence then with that precious word that I have quoted, "In thee I have found my delight". God is working to bring every one of us to that, and He is going to fill heaven with persons who have found their delight in Jesus.
Barnet, June 1929
Genesis 17:1, 8; Genesis 18:1, 6 - 8; Exodus 34:5 - 7; 1 Kings 3:5, 9; Isaiah 6:1 - 3; Acts 26:14 - 18; John 14:21
I desire to speak of the reality and necessity of real spiritual experiences. It is well that we should have knowledge; it is well, too, that we should have spiritual intelligence; but what I would like to put before you is the reality of what I should name real spiritual experiences in our souls.
In all the passages I have read we find examples of this, and I refer to them in order to bring out what is latent in them. First of all, if you take Abraham, he was marked by faith, that was one of his great characteristics; but he was also marked by the number of the appearings of the Lord to him. Now, I take it none of us here is without faith. We go on in faith, if I may use the expression, with a steady tread. Day in and day out, from week to week, month to month and year to year we tread our path, I trust, in faith. To walk by faith and not by sight, is normal, surely, to all believers; and that goes on, just in a steady way daily. But what I am speaking about is something more special. I need not emphasise how important it is that we should go on day by day in this steady tread of faith, but God gives us other things; He gives us what I may speak of as appearings or manifestations, not only to confirm our faith, which is true, but to enlarge our spiritual experience. He gives us not only
communications, but manifestations of Himself, and that is what we find referred to in all the passages I have read.
Abraham was a very remarkable figure in the history of God's saints and it is said (Genesis 12:7) that the Lord appeared to him and said that He would give him the land. That was a remarkable appearing; the Lord confirmed Abram in leaving his country, and opened out to him His promises and, though Abram had opportunity, he never returned to the land which he had left. He accepted the result of the communication that God made to him as final, and though he may have failed at various points, yet, as the epistle to the Hebrews tells us, though he might have had opportunity to return, he did not. Abram, therefore, was confirmed in his path by this first appearing.
I read of two further appearings, one in which the name of God is declared to him: "I am the Almighty God" (Genesis 17:1). In that appearing he received great accession in regard of the name and character of God, and it was a real spiritual experience. If he got an accession to his spiritual capital by this declaration of the name of God, his name also was changed; for that, I take it, would be a principle, that where there is a fuller revelation of the name of God, the name of the recipient of that revelation would also have a corresponding change. Thus he is now called Abraham, a change of name, corresponding to the name of God who was thus revealed to him, and vaster prospects were opened to him; he would not only have the land, but far greater blessing would accrue. What a moment for his soul to receive a revelation of that kind! God was revealed in this wonderful way, and Abram accepted it.
Then again in the other appearing of which I read (Genesis 18) there was even a higher privilege conferred upon Abraham, for he was placed in the position of ministering to the Holy One, of ministering refreshment to God. That is a most wonderful state of things, that Abraham should be so privileged that he should prepare a meal and minister to this blessed Visitor! Thus, in his case, there is a progression in the character, nature and extent of the intimacy of the appearings, and so it is with us. I believe that in these divine manifestations which are made to our hearts, there is a progression and increase in the character of the manifestations enjoyed. How wonderful to think that we, too, can have such manifestations of God and of the Lord Jesus to our hearts, so that we can minister to Them. How this bows our spirits in adoration and reverence before the One who so reveals Himself!
Now I come to Moses in Exodus 34. Moses, who was often in touch with the Lord, here desires to see His glory, and the Lord graciously responded, and declared His name before him, and, in the light of that appearing, Moses can go through the wilderness in the knowledge of God's wonderful character: "Merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in goodness and truth". God was declared in such a light as to enable Moses to carry out his heavy responsibilities, and to conduct the people of God through the wilderness under the impulse of that manifestation. I believe that every servant, in order to do any work which is entrusted to him, has to have a manifestation of the character of God or of the Lord, which will fit him for the conduct of that spiritual enterprise,
however small or however great the service. If he is to serve the saints rightly, the servant must have an apprehension of the character of God which will fit him for the carrying out of what is laid upon him; and that held good with Moses. The manifestation of God in this manner just suited the character of the moment and exactly brought out what Moses required to know of God, and of the character in which he should represent God to the people. With this manifestation of God to Moses he gets also a great sense of his own insignificance, so that he could say, "Alas, this people has sinned a great sin ... And now, if thou wilt forgive their sin ... but if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book" (Exodus 32:31, 32); as much as to say, I do not mind about myself, let the people of God be blessed, and if my extinction will help their blessing, let my extinction take place. That would be quite in keeping with the manifestation of God, and would be the right spirit surely of a servant. So God confirms His servant in his service. He recognises him, and Moses goes forth to that arduous service in the light of that particular manifestation of God to his soul.
Now, as to the next incident that I read (1 Kings 3), that of Solomon, and the Lord appearing to him in a dream, I would point out that it was a very great thing for Solomon to recognise that the source of wisdom was in God, and that God was prepared to give it to him. I think that has a very practical bearing on our souls; for there are occasions in which the greatest spiritual wisdom is needed. There are difficulties arising constantly amongst and regarding the Lord's people, and where are we to go? Whom are we to
address for the solution of those difficulties? Solomon at the outset of his career addressed the right Person and found the right source; he found in a manifest way that the wisdom he needed for ruling so great and numerous a people was to be found in God alone, and so must we. We may take all sorts of measures and investigate all avenues, so to speak, in order to find the wisdom to meet a certain difficulty, but we are brought to the fact that wisdom comes only from God. In regard of the assembly it comes from her exalted Head, and all of us should have the strong impression from the Lord Himself, and from God Himself, that that is where the source of wisdom lies. So we do not act restlessly, wandering about, so to say, for guidance, much as we value the advice of our brethren through whom wisdom is often ministered to our souls; for, through whomsoever the wisdom comes, the source of it is the assembly's Head! What rest it gives to the spirit to know that there is no difficulty the solution of which does not lie in the mind of God, and that it is possible for us to get it! It was surely the humble spirit in Solomon that got that answer; it was the lowly spirit that did not seek his own greatness. If there is any spirit of desiring to be great the Lord will not give us wisdom; but in the absence of that and having a pure desire to serve the Lord's people, God will give the answer.
Now there is another great effect of the manifestation of the Lord, and that would very rightly be found in a prophetic book. Isaiah said, "I saw the Lord ... high and lifted up". What he discovered there was the holiness of God. The impression of that appearing was the extreme
holiness of God; and I do verily believe that is what every one of us has to learn in a deeper way, the holiness of God and His presence which, while it attracts us, is profoundly real in its searching character. The invariable effect of the presence of God on us is to induce an acknowledgment of the holiness that is His, and thus it banishes from us all that lightness that naturally characterises us. Lightness and the want of depth in us are banished in such measure as we are in the presence of God and have the sense of His holiness. That holiness came out in the cross is obvious; that it came out in all its deep and wonderful character there is surely known to all of us; but its realisation is one of the great points in our spiritual history, and one which has not only to be attained, but maintained.
I pass on now to the instances in the New Testament. I shall first say a word about the first great appearing of the Lord to the apostle Paul. It is one of many appearings, as the Lord said, "For this purpose have I appeared to thee, to appoint thee ... a witness both of what thou hast seen, and of what I shall appear to thee in". So there were many appearings to the apostle during his life, but this was the first, the great initial appearing. I suppose it was the greatest and it had a profound effect upon him. I have no doubt that with any servant of the Lord who seeks to serve Him, an analogous experience takes place. That is, there is a real spiritual appearing of the Lord (not in vision like this, of course) which marks the character of the ministry. I think there is that with each of us who are servants of the Lord, and surely we all here are servants of the Lord, bondmen of Jesus Christ, and whether the work is small or
great, the Lord will give us, as He gave Paul, a distinct impression of His commission. You cannot run without a commission; you cannot engage in service without a distinct impression of the Lord. It may be feeble - I do not think it was feeble with Paul - but it must be there, and that appearing will characterise the whole of the ministry of the servant.
It is very important to notice that the germ of the whole of the double ministry of Paul is contained in what the Lord said to him here. I refer to the ministry of the assembly, and the ministry of the gospel. The ministry of the assembly is obviously contained in germ in the wonderful and beautiful expression, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? ... I am Jesus whom thou persecutest". We know it well. It contains the germ of the whole ministry of the assembly which was developed in fuller measure in Paul as he went on his course, and was the secret of all his devoted labour. If he knew and acknowledged that the assembly which he had persecuted was really Christ, he was prepared to prove Christ's love to the assembly in himself to the utmost, whether he were loved or not: "If even in abundantly loving you I should be less loved" (2 Corinthians 12:15). He loved and served the assembly which Christ loved. That is the real motive of service to the assembly; we are so impressed with Christ's love to the assembly, and what it is to the heart of Christ, that we love to serve it. It will prepare us for acting in the meanest capacity, and though we may know but little about it, it will bring suffering to us.
Now there is another feature in this appearing which I would point out; that is, the close connection and
intertwining of the two ministries. The Lord immediately goes on to give Paul his evangelical ministry, how he should go to the nations to open their eyes, "that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God". That is the evangelical side, though without the slightest doubt it was in view of the assembly, so that those of the nations thus reached should become part of that wonderful vessel of which I have spoken. You see how the two ministries are intertwined there; they are not divorced; "What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate" (Matthew 19:6). That is, there is to be no divorce between the ministry of the gospel and the ministry of the assembly; they would be mutually conducive to each other's progress, and they are both impressed upon the apostle at this wonderful appearing.
I have already referred to the many appearings that were made to Paul, and of some we have a record. For instance, when he came to Jerusalem and wanted to stay there and preach, the Lord appeared to him in an ecstasy and said, "Make haste and go quickly out of Jerusalem" (Acts 22:18). He pleaded with the Lord, and said he would like to stay: "Lord, they themselves know that I was imprisoning and beating in every synagogue those that believe on thee; and when the blood of thy witness Stephen was shed, I also myself was standing by and consenting, and kept the clothes of those who killed him" (verses 19, 20). But the Lord became insistent and said, 'You are to go'. The Lord is able to appear to His servants to give them directions for service, and while we may have to gather much as to His will, there is such a thing as the Lord giving
peremptory instruction, and I suppose every servant knows what that is; you cannot argue; you must do it.
That was the result of one appearing of the Lord to Paul; and, again, when the apostle was in some distress because he had made an error before the council, that very night the gracious Lord stood by him and said, "Be of good courage; for as thou hast testified the things concerning me at Jerusalem, so thou must bear witness at Rome also" (Acts 23:11). He would fulfil his service, and he would go to Rome and testify for the Lord there. The Lord is so gracious; He knew that the heart and the motive were right, and He would comfort His servant. Then again, we read that after he had been caught up to the third heaven, which was indeed more than an appearing, when he came down he was given the thorn for the flesh, and found it very trying for himself, a man of so impetuous and active a character. He besought the Lord thrice to take it from him, but the Lord said, "My grace suffices thee; for my power is perfected in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9). So he was called to suffer this, that he might find the power of Christ resting upon him. That was a gracious, comforting word of the Lord to him, and showed what a deep interest the Lord took in His servant, and how His grace was sufficient for this and everything of that kind.
When again at the end of his arduous life of service he stands before that inhuman monster whom he calls "the lion", and all the saints at Rome, who seem to have been very timid, deserted him, and no man stood by him, the Lord again manifested Himself to him, as he says, "The Lord stood with me" (2 Timothy 4:17). Do you think the Lord
would desert His servant though all deserted him? Never; He made Himself known in full support to His servant. Oh! do we not feel it, that it is only as He supports us that we have courage? It is only as He supports us that service is at all effectual, so that, as he says, "through me the proclamation might be fully made". But He does support us, as He supported His aged servant at that moment. We see thus how Paul was well acquainted with these wonderful manifestations and communications from the Lord.
Now in the last passage I read (John 14) we have a different note. We should expect the apostle John to present things to us in a character corresponding to his ministry, and thus we find here the character of the manifestations of the Lord from John's aspect. "He that has my commandments and keeps them, he it is that loves me; but he that loves me shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself to him". This then is a manifestation of affection. I do not mean that the others were not given in affection, but the stress here is laid upon affection, so that the manifestation is really one of pure affection. It is not a manifestation here for service, but a manifestation for affection: "He that loves me shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself to him". Now that is a real spiritual experience. Would to God we knew more about it! And I may say that it is not a bit of use reading this beautiful passage of Scripture and never experiencing the truth of it. I believe there are many believers who constantly admire and find comfort in this chapter, but who have not really experienced
what this verse speaks about. But it is open to us. You say, 'How is it open to us?' Love obeys, and that is how it is opened to us: "He that has my commandments and keeps them". So it is by the simple way of obedience. I do not know what you find, but I find in myself there is a great danger of not being simply obedient to the Lord. We may not be distinctly, directly and completely obedient to what the Lord tells us, and that is why we do not get these manifestations, for do you mean to tell me for one moment that love does not desire to bestow this favour? Of course it does. Do you mean to say that the Lord does not wish to manifest Himself to each of us? Of course He does, and the only thing that prevents Him, I believe, is our lack of obedience; but if obedience is there, and we love Him, He will certainly manifest Himself to us.
Now we may know a little about it or may know a great deal about it, but one feels we should all be exercised as to our experience of these things. Opposers say there is nothing in it but mere imagination; but manifestations of the Lord are real; and what is the effect in the soul? It is that the love of Christ is very near to us, very warm in our hearts, and we greatly appreciate it and enjoy it. I cannot explain its effects better than that. There is a realisation of His love in a deeper sense than ever. If I may refer to the collective thought, I believe the same holds good. We should never be content with a mere description of things, but we should realise when He comes to us. Not that we can claim it in a public way, but nevertheless the reality remains, and it should be our happy privilege, not only that we should read about it, but that we should experience it. I
do believe it is of the utmost importance that such spiritual experiences as I have referred to should be known by every one of us, and, if what I have said tends to send us to the Lord in prayer to see what it is that prevents them being ours, I shall be glad indeed. As this chapter (John 14) shows us, faith, however great, is not enough. It says, "Ye believe on God, believe also on me", and that, I understand, we all do. We all do believe on Him, there is faith, and that gets us over our difficulties and makes us go on so that we do not lose heart. As I said before, it keeps us going on steadily; but the Lord would have us enjoy more than that, namely the manifestations of Himself to our hearts, whether in love, or in any other of the aspects presented in these scriptures, for I have touched but the fringe of the subject. Let us then earnestly seek them in the power of the Spirit given to us, with the knowledge that all these experiences are possible for us, if we are exercised. May they become the real experience of our souls for His name's sake.
Bristol, July 1931
2 Thessalonians 2:7, 8; Luke 1:38; Luke 2:1 - 7; 1 Corinthians 15:24 - 28
What I want to suggest, beloved brethren, is the importance of subjection; and, with the Lord's help, I would desire to indicate that, if we are to be in accord with the mind of God in any relationship or position in which God has set us, or if we are to be prepared for that eternity that lies ahead into which we are about to enter, subjection is imperative as a state that is wrought in our souls; not simply that as to certain actions, we obey, but that the spring of those actions, is a state of subjection that exists in our souls. One feels the importance of it more because of the intensely solemn moment in which our lot is cast in this world. Without doubt we are rapidly drawing near to the moment that I read of in the epistle to the Thessalonians, when one will be revealed whom the Spirit of God calls by name - "the lawless one", or, as the AV gives it, "that Wicked". There is about to appear the great leader, whose characteristic feature and name is lawlessness, and the darkening influences that will reach a climax with his presence on earth are already here. The smoke of the pit out of which he comes - for it says that he ascends out of the bottomless pit - is already filling the earth, darkening every right influence that has hitherto governed the minds of men, affecting every relationship where subjection is proper.
In the wisdom of God, from our very birth, we are brought into a position in which subjection is the first feature. As children, the mind of God for children is subjection. The influence of the lawless one is being felt intensely in that relationship. Those of us who have children feel intensely the darkening there. Then, if I refer just for a moment to women, the mind of God for the woman is subjection to the man; but the influence of the lawless one from the pit is breaking that down. Again, as to the wife, her place according to the mind of God is subjection to her own husband; that too is being destroyed. The principle of subjection to the higher powers, is the mind of God in respect of government; it is being undermined everywhere. The principle of subjection of the servant to his master is being abandoned everywhere. I need not say that that which professes to be the church is manifestly abandoning that subjection. The awful influences of lawlessness are darkening this scene, and God, I am sure, would save us from it, by conveying to our hearts the blessedness of subjection, not that we accept it as inevitable, but that we accept it as loving it.
Hence I would desire to speak of Christ - the blessed One in whom every thought of God for men finds perfect expression. As the Lord said, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me" (Matthew 11:29). Whatever we may consider, everything is expressed perfectly, and can only be learnt perfectly from Christ. Thus I desire, with the Lord's help, to seek to present subjection, as it is seen in its blessed perfection in Christ, so that, as seeing it in Him, we may learn to love it, and thus get the gain that it brings. I know
that certain features of subjection were expressed here, in measure, before He came; but one loves to think that everything that has been right and of God was but the backward glow of the rising sun. As the sun comes up and we get the present shining of it, there still remain the beams of light that go backward, and every feature that was of God, from Abel onward, was really the beaming of that blessed light, that great light that the Lord speaks of: "The people sitting in darkness has seen a great light" (Matthew 4:16). The apostle Peter speaks of it, "The Spirit of Christ which was in them" (1 Peter 1:11), not that we imply it was there, or read it into it, but it was there; the Spirit of Christ was there "in them". So, if Abel was marked by subjection, which lies behind the Lord calling him "righteous Abel", it was that which he derived from Christ. If Abraham was subject to the divine command, "Go out of thy land, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house" (Genesis 12:1), he went out as subject. Of Moses God said, "my servant Moses" (Numbers 12:7); and of David He said, "I have found David my servant" (Psalm 89:20). These were men who were subject to God as having the Spirit of Christ. But I wanted just to indicate, as the Lord may give grace, some sense of the perfection of subjection as seen in Christ Himself.
So, if we come to the outset of His entrance into time, it is as One who was "from eternity" (Psalm 93:2), of whom the Spirit of God speaks as "subsisting in the form of God" (Philippians 2:6). What infinite greatness! Subjection does not apply to the form of God, I need not say; it is for God to command. Innumerable hosts of angels are before Him, as it says, "hearkening unto the voice of his word" (Psalm 103:20),
bending their ears, awaiting the divine command. Of Gabriel it says, "I am Gabriel, who stand before God" (Luke 1:19), but the form of God has never been seen, and never will be seen, by a creature: "Dwelling in unapproachable light; whom no man has seen, nor is able to see; to whom be honour and eternal might. Amen" (1 Timothy 6:16). But the One who was in the form of God took a bondman's form. Our hearts cannot take that in. "Subsisting in the form of God", it says He took - it was a deliberate, definite act - "a bondman's form". He took a condition in which subjection could be perfectly expressed. The setting of the passage in Philippians is primarily, that the mind was there to do it, before the act was consummated. The apostle says, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus" (Chapter 2, verse 5). It was firstly an act of mind, to take a bondman's form, to come into a condition where subjection could be expressed, to accept the absolute will of God - for that is the idea of a bondman. A bondman is not at liberty to act for himself; he is bound by the will of his master. The word "master" in some places means despot; it means one who will not brook, who will not tolerate another will. The Lord Jesus took a bondman's form and was found in fashion as a Man.
Who is there that is suited for the coming in of Christ? What vessel is there that God will use, as prepared under His own mighty hand of power, for the entrance of such a One into the world? One indeed, of whom it is said, "Lo, I come ... to do, O God, thy will" (Hebrews 10:7). The Spirit of God selects a certain vessel for this supremely great act, when He should take a "bondman's form" and be "found in
figure as a man". Who is it? The verse I read indicates the suitability of Mary to be such a vessel. She says, "Behold the bondmaid of the Lord; be it to me according to thy word". She corresponded subjectively with the mind that had decided to take a bondman's form, the bondmaid corresponding with the Bondman. There was in that beloved woman's soul, wrought in it subjectively, subjection to the will of God.
Then the Lord Jesus Himself is born as Joseph and Mary are in the very act of expressing subjection, according to the mind of God. The decree as to the census had gone forth from Caesar Augustus, the alien power that then was, a decree naturally irritant to the heart of any Jew, but recognising the power God had ordained, Joseph and Mary, at cost to themselves that we cannot fully understand, carried out in subjection God's mind in relation to the higher powers; and at that very moment the Lord Jesus is found here in this scene, in the very atmosphere and conditions of subjection.
He moves from that point, and we next see Him at twelve years of age, a solemn age - an age that is testing perhaps more than most. The Lord says to Mary consequent upon those twelve years in secret, "Did ye not know that I ought to be occupied in my Father's business?" (Luke 2:49). He assumes that she would have understood in those twelve years how imperative it was for Him to be subject to the will of God, that His Father's business should control and govern Him. Nevertheless, at that very moment it says that He went down to Nazareth and was "in subjection to them", expressing perfectly, from twelve years
and onward, the mind of God during that period. What days they were - the eye and heart of God alone can put an estimate upon them!
Then He "was beginning to be about thirty years old" (Luke 3:23), indicating what those days of subjection were to God, for He says, at the close of them, "Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I have found my delight" (verse 22), not 'I do find', though that would be true, but "I have". God had looked upon every one of those days, and the divine estimate is expressed of what that subjection in secret and obscurity was to Him: "In thee I have found my delight".
But then we follow Him during those three and a half years, and it is indicated that they are taken account of in days. The Spirit of God suggests in the book of Daniel, a period like them, in which every one of them is remembered: "Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and thirty-five days!" (Daniel 12:12). The days are taken account of, every one of them, and all were days of subjection. They were begun in a way that makes one feel intensely humbled when we compare our days with His. How many of us must feel like Jacob, "Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life" (Genesis 47:9), but that does not in any wise represent those blessed days of His! They may have been few, as men count days - but they were infinitely blessed! They were begun each morning in subjection, as it says, "He wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the instructed" (Isaiah 50:4). Think of that, beloved brethren; every single day, morning by morning, His ear was opened for instruction. It is the Bondman waiting upon His Master
whom He loved for instructions for the day. Every single day was like that! No wonder the memorial of them is laid up before God; no wonder that the Lord said that the time would come when men would look to see one of those days - just one! If it be that the instruction for one day was that "He must needs pass through Samaria" (John 4:4) - albeit that the journey brings weariness to Him - there is no question of His subjection, so that at that very moment He says, "My food is that I should do the will of him that has sent me" (verse 34).
What shall we say of the closing day of those days? One can only remind you of what it says in Hymn 190:
That was the last day of the sojourn of Christ here. See Him at the commencement of it, in prayer for instruction, knowing perfectly what that day contained in His own spirit - shrinking from it in a holiness that we adore, yet nevertheless asking for instructions: "My Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me; but not as I will, but as thou wilt" Matthew 26:39). What subjection! We cannot view it save "a stone's throw" away; not even Peter, or James, or John could go all the way to contemplate it. He went a stone's throw beyond any point that they could go. But we see subjection in perfection there, as always. And so He dies: He lays down His life in subjection. One point of view of the death
of Christ, beyond and outside of the instruments that caused it, is that He laid down His life in subjection: "I have received this commandment of my Father" (John 10:18). His death was the supreme act of subjection.
One used to think that that act was the end of subjection in Christ, and that ever after it would be rule, it would be command. But, dear brethren, that is not so. Having entered into manhood, He retains manhood in subjection. One view of the resurrection, of His taking His life again in manhood, is that it is done in subjection: "I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to take it again. I have received this commandment of my Father". The commandment covers both the laying it down and the taking it again. Commanded to take it again in resurrection, obedience to that command is expressed in His resurrection. I do not of course refer to that point we love to take account of, that it was the surpassing greatness of the power of God that wrought in Christ in raising Him from the dead, but there is also this view in John 10:18, that He took it again in subjection to a divine command.
Our thoughts and our hearts would go to the passage we read in 1 Corinthians 15. His present position is, "Sit at my right hand until I have put thine enemies to be the footstool of thy feet" (Acts 2:34, 35); sit there till every single thing is subject to Christ. That is the mind of God for Christ at the present moment. As Pharaoh said to Joseph, "I am Pharaoh" (Genesis 41:44), "only concerning the throne will I be greater than thou" (verse 40), but otherwise no one was to lift their hand or foot without Joseph. That is the
position of Christ, and it will continue until everything is subject to Him. God is going to put everything in subjection to Christ, and when everything is subdued, when there is nothing unsubdued in the universe of God, what then? It is beyond us to express, but the Spirit of God says when everything shall have been brought into subjection to Him, then "the Son also himself shall be placed in subjection". We are now in our thoughts touching a little on what we have had before us - "from eternity to eternity". The passage in 1 Corinthians 15 brings us, as it were, to the door of eternity. What place will the Son have in eternity? One would not dare to say it, if the Spirit of God in the Scripture did not say it, but the Son will be placed, not exactly He will become subject, as by His own act, though that would be true, but He is placed by God in subjection. The Son, the One whom the Father loves, for "the Father loves the Son" (John 3:35) - that One who has made God known to our hearts, is placed in subjection by God. The One whom we all love to kiss even today - for it says, "Kiss the Son" (Psalm 2:12) - the One towards whom the holy affections of the liberated universe will yet express themselves, of Him it says, "The Son also himself shall be placed in subjection". The underlying condition of all eternity is subjection to God: "From eternity to eternity thou art God" (Psalm 90:2). Subjection will be the basic condition of the universe eternally. There is an aspect of God's kingdom that is eternal, as the apostle says, "Now to the King of the ages, the incorruptible, invisible, only God, honour and glory to the ages of ages. Amen" (1 Timothy 1:17).
That will be secured to God for ever, as the Son remains for ever in manhood, in subjection to God.
Now, if we are to get the gain of what is in the mind of God for us, there must be subjection. You can see that in the gospel of John, where the Lord comes into the time condition and scene out of eternity. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). Then further, "The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us" (verse 14). What will He not bring in? What will not such a One bring in as available to men? Who could measure it? No one. The apostle says, "For of his fulness we all have received, and grace upon grace" (verse 16), because of Who had come in. But who got the gain of what He brought in? Those who were subject. Take the good wine - the joy that is never deficient, joy that will continue for ever - who got it? Those who were subject. Mary, for the moment, beloved woman whom all generations call blessed, stepped out of the place of subjection, and said to Him, "They have no wine" (John 2:3). She undertook to direct Him, but the Lord will not allow that, and she accepts the adjustment. She is a woman who can be adjusted, and she says, "Whatever he may say to you, do" (verse 5). That is subjection. The Lord says, "Fill the water-vessels with water" (verse 7), and they filled them. "Draw out now", and they drew out. The lawless mind would have said, 'Why fill them with water?' and, 'What is the use of drawing out?' But there was subjection, and the good wine was there. Beloved brethren, we only know what the good wine is, as we are subject. And so in chapter 4, the courtier's son is ill and about to die, and he comes to the
Lord knowing by faith that because of who He was, He could bring in what was needed, and the Lord says, "Go, thy son lives" (verse 50); and we read that he went his way. There was subjection, and healing flows from subjection. If there are conditions that require healing, and there are such everywhere, healing comes in where there is subjection. In chapter 6, where it is a question of food, you have the same principle coming to light. Five thousand men are there, and what does the Lord say? "Make the men sit down". There is acceptance in subjection of what the Lord says, and the food comes; it comes where there is subjection. In chapter 9 you have the same principle. There is a man born blind and in darkness, but the Lord makes mud and puts it on his eyes, and says to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, which is interpreted, Sent", and the man went, and washed, and came seeing. Does that not touch the question why some of us do not see? Someone recently said, 'As long as I live I will not accept that' - speaking in regard to light the Lord had given. Could he ever see? Never; till there is subjection, but where there is that, the light will come. It involves subjection not only to the Lord, but as Peter says, "Likewise ye younger, be subject to the elder" (1 Peter 5:5). That does not refer merely to years, but to those who have known God longer and better than we. The word is, to be subject, and light comes where there is subjection. Peter goes on to say, "All of you bind on humility towards one another", and that is a basic condition for light to come. The Lord said, "Go", and the man went; the Lord said, "Wash", and the man says, "Having gone and washed, I saw;" there was subjection.
Again just one more word. The Lord Jesus appears at the grave of Lazarus. Mary and Martha, with a right sense of what such a One as John's gospel presents could do, sent for Him, but the Lord remained where He was two days, deliberately allowing the condition to manifest itself fully, and then He went. He comes to the grave, and there was a stone upon it, and the Lord says, "Take away the stone" (John 11:39). Martha says, 'No, do not allow the awful condition there to be manifest; hide it'. But the Lord says, "Take away the stone", and it says, "They took therefore the stone away" (verse 41). Where darkness and corruption have been, life and incorruptibility are brought to light. It is life out of death, only known where there is subjection. We cannot have living conditions without subjection. How often we are like Martha, we shrink from allowing the Lord to uncover, or have uncovered, the condition which exists, and which He knows better than we do, but if He uncovers the conditions, it is but to manifest His power when there is subjection.
May the Lord help us all, not only to accept the principle of subjection as ordained of God for us, but that we may love it, as seeing its beauty and perfection in Christ, and as knowing it is to continue through all eternity - the eternity that is before us. Subjection to God will remain unbroken throughout all eternity, but we will get the gain of what is eternal now, in the measure in which we are prepared to be subject. May the Lord thus help us.
Bristol, July 1931
Psalm 8:1; Hebrews 1:1 - 4; Philippians 3:7 - 9; Psalm 16:1 - 3; 2 Corinthians 4:6, 7; 1 Corinthians 12:31
The serious depression in value of material things, beloved brethren, awakes an inquiry in our hearts as to whether we have rightly valued divine things. God Himself, and all that stands related to the realm of blessedness which God has opened up to us, may be regarded as excellent; and I want to show you the excellency of what we have, for all we have in God and in Christ excels in value everything that this world can bestow. I ask the attention of those who are younger, particularly, for I do not wish you to follow up anything except what is excellent. It appears to me that it will be to our lasting discredit if we pursue things that are not excellent; and I raise the challenge here with you all, as to whether we are really following what is excellent. God has not changed! Christ has not depreciated! All that God has to bestow is marked by abiding excellency; so that in pursuing divine things, we are choosing the best, and if any of you are choosing the world, your foolishness is apparent to all. Do not despise or discredit the people of God, for they are seeking the things that excel, whereas you are following the things that are rapidly depreciating.
The psalmist has evidently been greatly impressed with his knowledge of God, for he says, "Jehovah our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!" (Psalm 8:1). God's
name excels every other name, not only locally, but universally, as it says, "in all the earth". Whatever part of the earth you care to bring up for comparison, God's name excels every other name there. There are illustrious names, some of which are universally valued and honoured; but mainly they are local or national - not excellent in all the earth, for in other parts of the earth they are unknown. But with God, His name is excellent in all the earth! There are, as I said, great names, but I do no one a dishonour if I remind you that no earthly name is excellent in all the earth, for if you were to examine them, you would find something there which is discreditable. But not so with God - no one could discover anything to discredit God. The whole history of time may pass under critical examination, but His name is excellent in all the earth, whose majesty is set "above the heavens;" so there is nothing to be ashamed of in being here for God. Indeed, there is something to be ashamed of if you are not here for Him, if you have not yet learned what is truly excellent.
First of all, let us consider God's name in relation to His word. Many a man has given his word, and has been compelled to retire from it, but not so with God. You remember the wicked Balaam said, "God is not a man, that he should lie ... Shall he say and not do?" (Numbers 23:19). What a word for the king of Moab to hear, who desired to curse the people of God. Surely His name is excellent in all the earth! You recall that after the flood, God gave His word that He would never overthrow the earth by water again. He said, "I set my bow in the clouds" (Genesis 9:13) - not in the firmament, but in the clouds. God said that
advisedly. When we were passing over the Atlantic recently, the sky was lowering, and it looked tempestuous, but in the eastern sky there stretched a rainbow with an arc dipping each end into the sea. As I looked on that, I thought of God's name - it is excellent in all the earth! Will He ever break His word? Never. You may trust Him. You may trust a brother, and he may fail you because he is incapable, but it is never thus with God. Never! Throughout all generations, to the last hour in time, that word will stand; God can be trusted, and you may rely upon Him. Beloved, what stability does this give us! We are not trusting in things that are today, and tomorrow are gone; our trust is in the living God, and we have a foundation in Him that is immutable - for His name is excellent in all the earth. Whether north or south, east or west, God is to be trusted, and would have us rely on Him who is invisible. Think of man's intruding into God's domain. Men laugh to scorn those words, "Seeing him who is invisible" (Hebrews 11:27). What a paradox they are to puny man! But not to the person who knows God, for although He is invisible to the natural eye, even Job could say, "Lo, he goeth by me, and I see him not" (Job 9:11) - he knew it. We have known seasons when God has been very near to us, which have enhanced Him to us; such seasons give us a status on the earth, but not of it. I would remind you also of the word God spoke to Noah, after He had smelled that savour of rest: "Henceforth, all the days of the earth, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease" (Genesis 8:22). God has always been true to His word, and ever will be.
We may speak of God's name in relation to what He does. I venture to say that God has never done a single thing that could be amended. I am somewhat amused, at times, when I hear of scientists who imagine they could amend the acts of God, and so make a better world than He. Forsooth, what nonsense! His name is excellent in all the earth, and there we stand. We know but very little of the creation; but when we sit down and meditate upon God's works therein, how magnificent they are! The tiniest insect that hums in the summer breeze has a place in God's creation, for He never created anything aimlessly. The mountain that towers in the clouds - has that been put there for nothing? No. Whether it be the heavens above or the earth beneath or the waters that cover the sea, they alike proclaim forever the transcendent wisdom of our God, and we stand by this. Are we going to be driven from our foundation by all the foolish cavilling of man? No, not for one minute! We say with a calm resolution, "Jehovah our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!" and stand by that.
God's name is excellent with regard to what He gives. He has given the best. Think of what He has given to us! Take the earth for example; think of the resources of it! We touch only the very fringe of what there is to know of it. Inventors are crowned with laurels, but the Creator of the things that they discover is forgotten. Do we speak of the marvels of radiography and other discoveries, but forget to render homage to Him who brought the whole universe into existence by His word? What God has given is great, and we can praise Him for all His works. Every morning, the
light of which breaks on our lives, is only a reminder of the innumerable gifts He has given. Where should we be without them? - and yet we often rejoice in the gifts, and, alas! forget the Giver. Is this right? We know it is not. May God grant that there may be found in our souls a greater sense of the excellence that there is in Him, and in His greatest gift, His Son. The world has turned away from Him; it took all that He gave, and misused it. God gave His Son to die in woe unspeakable, in anguish indescribable; He was scorned, despised, spit upon, and hated by the world that has turned away from God and from His grace. But His name is excellent in all the earth, and will yet be made known through Him who in death has declared that name. There shall be glory to God "in the assembly in Christ Jesus unto all generations of the age of ages" (Ephesians 3:21). I do feel that we need to understand the immense value of what we have in God. His name, as revealed, sets forth what He is, and so excels everything in all the earth.
Well, I now desire to say a word with regard to Christ and His name. The writer of Hebrews was laying out before believers that God had spoken in His Son, "whom he has established heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds" (Hebrews 1:2). He refers to this great and glorious Person as having a name more excellent than angels. Now, angels have a name, they have renown; Psalm 103:20 speaks of them as "mighty in strength;" and Job 38:7 speaks of the sons of God shouting for joy when the earth's foundations were laid - a wonderful intimation of what took place in view of God's counsels in grace. But think of Christ - He inherits a name more excellent than angels.
Angels were named sons of God, they were created beings who derived their origin from God; but think of the moment when Jesus became Man and could respond to God as His Son. He occupied that place on the earth as God's Son, not merely as a son, but the Son! And He inherited a name more excellent than angels, for no person ever appeared before or since who could fill out that name: neither Michael nor Gabriel, nor any other angel could fill out that unique place which was His. Yet the proud world despised Him, scorned and crucified Him. We shall yet be acquainted with the greatness of angels, for Michael and Gabriel are great personages. Think of Gabriel saying, "I am Gabriel, who stand before God" (Luke 1:19); and yet the religious leaders of today dare to place this lowly Man on a platform of equality with other men. It is blasphemous sacrilege, and our souls revolt against it. We have in Him a Person whom we know, and we are sitting at His feet learning heavenly wisdom from Him; never was there a teacher like Him at whose feet we may sit without fear. You do not require to graduate at the universities; it will damage you, for there is the awful danger that you trust in your own mind, and he who does that quenches the Spirit; let us sit at the feet of Christ, and learn heavenly wisdom from Him. We know men who have done this, and their wisdom is apparent to all. Let us follow their example, and so become wise. A man counts it a great day when he can bring forward his son and say, 'This is my son'. God has said, "This is my beloved Son: hear him" (Mark 9:7). He only whose name is excellent is to be heard.
Let us now examine the thing worked out in a man's soul. Saul of Tarsus, although no ordinary man, attached no value to himself at all, yet he was highborn, and was educated at the feet of Gamaliel. He was also free-born. When the captain of the military guard in Jerusalem said to Paul, "I, for a great sum, bought this citizenship", Paul could say, "But I was also free born" (Acts 22:28). Paul had a great status on the earth under the providence of God; and we must take care that we recognise and respect God's providence. There is a Satanic effort in the world to break it down, but providence must be respected among us. Paul had seen a glory in Christ that surpassed all other glory, and he gave up everything for Him; he was content to suffer the loss of everything for Him, and, as he writes, to "count also all things to be loss on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord" (Philippians 3:8). Here was a man who had much on this earth in the way of status and masterly ability, but he laid it all down at the feet of Jesus - that anointed, blessed Man whom God had exalted. Now I ask: Has Christ a like place in your heart? You may hold the doctrine of it, but have you got the thing? You may be as sound as possible in doctrine, but what is that without the thing? You can very soon tell whether a person has counted things loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ, for in such a case He is the dearest and the most treasured Object of the heart. Do you dress as though you belonged to a Person so illustrious, or do you adopt the fashions of the world to adorn the body that belongs to the anointed Man? Do you want to speak like persons who are in darkness and at a distance from God? What language do
you speak - that of Wall Street, or the language of heaven, the most dignified that the universe will ever know? Beloved brethren, we want to be like Christ, to be suitable in our bearing, in our deportment and speech and dress, so that we can be taken up and put down on that golden street! Let me ask you, dear young brethren: Has Christ got the supreme place in your hearts? Oh, it is a lovely thing to know Christ. How it refines one to meditate on His glory, and to commune with Him! We thus become morally great, even as Paul could speak of "the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord". That holy, anointed Man dominated his whole life, and everything else was as filth to him. I do urge the younger ones to stand out nobly from this world, to set themselves to know Christ, and to give Him the first place in their hearts, even as Paul did. Remember, that if you are trafficking with this world, you have not got Christ as the hidden Man of the heart. May God give it to us to know Him thus increasingly, so that we shall stand out in this world as those alluded to in Psalm 16 as "the saints that are on the earth ... the excellent" (verse 3). There are none to equal them. They are royal and ennobled people marked by a peculiar glory. Some may think that this country is the most excellent nation, but that is wrong! - the saints of God are the most excellent in the earth. Have you seen the light of the glory of heaven in the face of a little crippled woman in a cottage? Have you ever seen the very joy of the golden street coming into the soul of a dying brother? Oh, how wonderful it is thus to know the saints! They are indeed the excellent on the earth. My dear young people, set yourselves to be identified with the people of
God. You boys and girls at school, choose your companions among those who belong to Christ. You children of Christian parents, let me affectionately entreat you to choose your companions among God's people. They are the excellent on the earth. Love them, serve them. I am not concerned about their failures, but about the moral glory that I have seen in them, day by day, and in every land that I visit. I am glad to know the saints, without regard to class or colour, as the excellent on the earth!
Now, we have to remember that we can trust in nothing as inherited by us. Paul spoke in 2 Corinthians 4:4 of the "radiancy of the glad tidings of the glory of the Christ". He had in mind the glory of Christ shining from him. Whilst the apostles had a place of precedence among the saints, they had only a place, really, in the enjoyment of the thing, which is proper to all Christians. Paul spoke of the excellency of the power, that it might be of God and not from us; he alludes to the radiance of the glory that should shine in the body of the ordinary Christian. That is a wonderful thing; our first qualification is that our bodies should be transparent vessels, so that the glory may shine forth, not only by what we say, but by what we are. I could point to people who have never said a word to me, yet I have seen the radiancy of the glory of Christ there. No doubt, the reference is to Gideon's men, whose pitchers were broken in order that the light might shine forth, but the apostle has in mind the greatness of divine power on our behalf, so that the light may shine forth, not by breaking the vessels, but by their transparency, which is a greater thing; and we have the excellency of the power of God on our
behalf in view of this. I know by experience that there is great power in the evil influences of the world, but I know a power that excels; it is the power of God. So he says that the excellency of the power may be of God, upon which we may count. You can always have that power demonstrated to you from the Lord on high - I commend it to you; I beg you to put it to the test. When you feel the power of the world against you, say, 'Lord, help me'. I would like you to leave tonight with a sense that the power is available for you, and that you know how to apply it, a power that excels all other. Now, we have to be on our guard, because we occupy a position of excellent greatness; we have a power that excels on our side.
I turn for a moment, before I close, to speak of love's way in relation to gift. Gift is really an expression here, in man, of Christ on high. Whatever form the gift may take, that is what it is. The apostle often alludes to the matter of gift. He says, "Desire earnestly the greater gifts" (1 Corinthians 12:31). Showing that gift is open to desire. It is a great thing to have gift as power from the ascended Man, but we must ever remember that there is something greater than gift, and that is love; and love, the divine nature, is open to us all, it is "a way of more surpassing excellence", as Paul says. Now, what is needed among us to hold us together, and to help us in relation to Christ Jesus and to God, is love, love that "has long patience, is kind, ... is not insolent and rash, is not puffed up, ... does not impute evil" (1 Corinthians 13:4, 5). Do we know this more excellent way of love? Without it, my dear brother, I am nothing! One may ask, 'Here is a brother who has given his body to be burned.
Has he love?' Without it, he is nothing. 'Here is a sister who is well off, and gives everything for the poor. Has she love?' Without it, she is nothing. 'Here is a brother that can preach with the eloquence of an archangel; everybody is flocking to hear him. Has he love?' Without love, he is nothing; he is no more than "sounding brass or a clanging cymbal" (verse 1). Love is of God - it is the way of surpassing excellence. Love will suffer; love will die. The One who set forth love in all its greatness did not stand for His rights, much less fight for them. Love in Christ suffered, died, gave all! This is the way of surpassing excellence, of which this world knows nothing. The world is full of lust and hatred and envy, but I know a place where divine love is, even among God's people. It is a way of surpassing excellence.
From Notes of Readings in New York and Other Ministry, 1932
John 1:6, 7, 19 - 28; 2 Kings 5:1 - 4; Daniel 1:3, 4; Daniel 3:13 - 18
I have a definite impression, dear brethren, that before this dispensation is closed by the translation of the assembly, we shall witness a revival of activity, both in the gospel and in the assembly. One observes that the Lord is graciously gathering in the young people, and they are coming under the sound of the ministry that expresses the true dignity of the christian position. The Lord finds pleasure not only in blessing His people, but in using them, and what I have in mind is that the ministry of the moment should help us to reach out in service under the Lord's guidance. The scriptures read cover a wide field of instruction and example, and I wish to show from them certain persons who took up the true dignity of speaking for God: a man, grown to full manhood, a little maid, and three youths. Their speaking was effective; it was such as made God and Christ great to those who heard; it was such as left room for divine support without which the speaking cannot be effective.
I begin with John the baptist because he stands before us, in John's gospel, as a speaker who was perfectly in accord with the thoughts of God for whom he spoke. He is called, "a man sent from God". I would challenge every one here, as I would challenge myself, as to whether we bear the
marks of persons who have been "sent". I may be living in a certain city because I was born there, or because my parents moved there, or because it suits my health or pleasure - all these are accidental or incidental causes - but wherever I may be, or in what circumstances I may be found, I am privileged to be there for God, as "sent", and to have the features of one who does not belong to the scene in which he serves. There was nothing about John the baptist that indicated that he was a man of the world; everything about John suggested that he belonged to another place. He spoke of things that were not within the range of the greatest men of the world; he had eyes to see that which no one else had seen, for he saw the Spirit descending on Jesus, and abiding. His sensibilities, his tastes, even his dress and manners, all indicated that he was in accord with another world. I need hardly say, dear brethren, that no service and no speaking for God can be effective unless that service is a primary object and purpose in our lives; natural things and material things are incidental. This is the mark of a "sent" one.
Now, John spoke to religious people. My impression is that the Lord may open the way for us to speak to religious people. It is much harder to speak to such people as Pharisees represent; they not only require explanation (which John gave) but it is necessary to speak in exclamation, and in witness; for the religious world is hard and cold, and those who speak for Christ and of Christ must not only speak accurately and forcefully of Him, in describing who He is and what He has done, but they must be able to speak feelingly when the atmosphere is not
sympathetic. It was when John spoke in exclamation, disclosing the depths of his soul, that his two disciples followed Jesus.
When these messengers came to John, they, like all religious people, challenged him as to who he was. The moment you speak of Christ to people who are what is called 'religious', they want to know who you are and to what you belong. I believe it is essential that we should be able to give an answer to such a challenge. We often avoid such a question, but John does not avoid it though challenged four times. I would commend to you John's final description of what he was and who he was; he says, "I am the voice". There was nothing about that voice to obscure any feature of the glory of Christ, or to hinder anyone. John lifted up his voice in that cold, religious atmosphere, and proclaimed the worthiness of the One whose path he had come to make straight. How worthily he speaks of Jesus! One covets, I am sure we all do, to be able to speak well of Jesus; to convey two impressions in speaking: one, a sense of our own unworthiness; the other, a true sense of His great worthiness. John was not like the popular preachers of the present day; they require much paraphernalia as a background to their speaking - music, gorgeous ceremonial, fine buildings and so forth - but the background that John had was water. John served near the water indeed, "a great deal of water" (John 3:23). A disciple of John the baptist would learn that he had to go into the water; you could not remain long in John's company without that.
John stands before what might well be described as a perishing system; everything was perishing. The wine was running out; the well was deep; men were labouring for that which yielded nothing; and John stands at the gateway to that system, and says, as it were, 'All that you see must run out, it can only come to an end - but I will show you the only way out of it all', and in doing so he would point to the water. There is only one way out of a perishing scene; the death of Christ has opened a way out of the scene where all is perishing, and by baptism, in the faith of my soul, I accept that way. John stands at the door, and he proclaims that there is a way out of the scene in which men are perishing, but that there is everything in that glorious system that centres in the Son of God who baptises with the Holy Spirit. In that passage is indicated the way into, and the power of, another order of things, in which the joy is never-ending.
Now John calls attention to the shoes of the Lord. There is something very interesting in this. When he proclaims His worthiness he draws attention to His feet, saying that he is not worthy to unloose the thong of His sandal. The feet of Jesus are one of the themes running through this gospel, from the point where John calls attention to it, right on to the tomb. Mary of Bethany, in chapter 12, understands this theme, so she anoints His feet. John's word calls attention to the feet as shod, it is not the thought of intimacy, but Mary's anointing involves intimacy; that is, the thong is unloosed and the service of love in intimacy is seen. In chapter 20 we see two angels in the tomb, sitting one at the head and the other at the feet
where the body of Jesus had lain. That is to say, heaven is drawing attention now, not only to the feet, but to the head of the Lord Jesus. John would, so to speak, show us what is connected with those blessed feet, the feet of the One who came here by His own voluntary act - "The Word became flesh" (John 1:14) - the One by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made that was made; the One of whom it can be said, "In Him was life, and the life was the light of men" (John 1:4). John would say, so to speak, 'Just think of that glorious Person standing before you, shod for walking, shod for working!' John later saw Him walking and exclaimed, "Behold the Lamb of God" (verse 36). In chapter 4 we read about Him being weary with the way. How precious to contemplate those blessed feet shod for labour, come here in order that God might be declared, come here in order that the works of God might be made manifest; come here in order to seek His sheep, gather them together into one flock and teach them to move under the sound of His own blessed voice. Well may John say that he is not worthy to unloose the thong of His sandal! One would covet to speak of Jesus in this way, as being able to draw attention to features of His glory and dignity that would make Him attractive in the eyes of men.
"My Father worketh hitherto and I work" (John 5:17). What glorious results we may expect when divine Persons work together. They work as in the sphere of affection. Some of us were noticing that chapter 5: 1 - 4 of this gospel is a portrayal of the public position of the religion of today. We read about a pool, obviously a small idea, and about a multitude of impotent folk who lay there; we read about
great competition - one man getting in front of another and no man to help - and then attention is drawn to a man who had lain for thirty and eight years on his couch, awaiting an opportunity for healing. How many there are of the Lord's people involved in public religion in which there is no spiritual vitality! How many there are that are lying on a couch, placidly accepting the position, not seeing how it can be altered or improved and not having the faith to rise up and leave it and follow the Lord into an outcast position! But after thirty-eight years of this kind of history, the Lord came in and He said, "Arise, take up thy couch and walk" (John 5:8). Perhaps the Lord will come in near the end - for forty years is the full period of man's testing - and say, "Arise, take up thy couch and walk;" and perhaps He will do it through the speaking, the service of His people. I commend these features of John the baptist to you; he is a model speaker, one who brought in true thoughts of the worthiness and greatness of Christ.
I might refer to other speakers in this gospel briefly before passing on to the consideration of the Old Testament passages. The Samaritan woman in chapter 4 became a most effective speaker; she went to the men of the city. Doubtless she was accustomed to speaking to men - it may have been in an unholy and light way, but she goes to the men of the city now with the element of holiness in her, for she had been in the presence of One who had told her all things that ever she did. So far as we know, the Lord had only told her of one chapter of her history; we are not to suppose that was all; for she had a sense that she had been in the presence of One by whom she was entirely exposed
and yet that He was the giving God. The woman goes to the men of the city, and, wonderful to relate, the men of the city, at her word, go to Jesus!
Then in chapter 9 we see a man who is forced to speak for himself. Many young people have to be forced to speak for themselves. The Lord allows the circumstances to teach him and to force him to speak; indeed, his parents step aside. They say, "He is of age: ask him" (verse 21). He is made to speak for himself, and the result of his speaking is that all the Jews are confounded, and he finds himself without a home, without a family and without a synagogue; but he finds in the presence of the Son of God far more than that out of which he had been cast. His eyes have been opened for another world.
I turn now to the second book of Kings with the intention of showing you another kind of speaking. Perhaps some will say that John the baptist was a very special vessel, and indeed he was; but now I will show you a vessel whose speaking should greatly encourage all the young people, and especially the young women, to speak for Christ. I find that there are very few women who are prepared to speak about Christ unless the atmosphere is sympathetic. This little maid is a captive. Perhaps she spoke in the kitchen, going about the duties of the house. What is suggested in this little maid is how the world system would make the people of God captive in connection with the drudgery of the world. But although the maid is a captive, and waits on Naaman's wife, she does not speak like a captive; she speaks in all the dignity of a "sent" person. It was no accident, nor even an incident, that she
was in that country, and in that place - though it may have been so inscribed in the history of Syria. God is over all these happenings by the way, behind the scenes He is 'sending' representative persons, and wherever His people are found, in whatever circumstances, He would have them to bear the marks of those who have been "sent" - those who belong to another place, but are where they are as "sent" there. I feel sure that if you could have looked on that little maid you would have seen Israel in her dress, her manners, her speech and her heart. She is spoken of as a maid of the land of Israel. She is in another country, in circumstances that were not agreeable, but she is there in all the dignity of the people of God; she is a maid of Israel, a "sent" person, and so she speaks. Look at what she says! Some women like to talk over their work, and it is sometimes light talk, but look how this little maid talks. She brings God in as having a prophet in Samaria and she brings in God in an appealing way, for what could appeal to a leper like the story of one who could heal him? We should be able to speak in such circumstances of Jesus! We should be able to present Him in an appealing way as able to meet every kind and character of the need so prevalent today. She brought God in. How it changed the whole situation! What a speaker she was! I would like to ask the young girls who are believers: Have you ever spoken about Christ? Have you thought that this was a kind of service out of your reach? Do you think that this is reserved for men whom the Lord may have gifted? This is not that kind of speaking; this is the speaking that can go on in the kitchen, in the factory, in the office, or anywhere. It is a
speaking that is great enough and dignified enough to reach up to the great military commander of that country; it is a speaking that is great enough to reach the ears of a king. How far-reaching was the word of this captive maid! I would commend to the young women the idea of speaking about Christ, but as maintaining the dignity of the position. Before you do it, and as you do it, see that you carry the marks and the dress and the manners of a "maid that is of the land of Israel;" for if you want to be effective for God, if you want to speak in this manner, you must bear these marks.
In the other reference, in the book of Daniel, we get the thought of "youths" - young men. What we see in this story is how the world system would bid for the most comely and beautiful amongst the people of God to adorn its own system. These young men were part of a company of young persons who were taken to adorn the kingdom of this heathen monarch - this despot, whose word could go out to all peoples and languages and nations - this man who would even make a god, an idol of gold, and call upon all people to worship it - this man who made things pleasant by music. If the world is bidding for you and attracting you, I speak to young believers, before you are charmed by the music of the cornets and the psaltery and the harp, I would like you to lay hold of this fact that behind it is a strange god - not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ - another god. The sound, doubtless, was pleasing, for in every place this music was to be made, but behind the music is another god, an idol. That is what is behind the world. Whatever it uses to attract the people of God, there
is behind it another god; its object is to take you away from the God who loves you, and the Christ who died for you.
Now, although these young men were captives they were being loaded with favours; they were being taught the learning of the Chaldeans. Every young person who has to pass through the world comes under this kind of influence. The world will be glad to have you; it will be quite ready to teach you "the learning and the language of the Chaldeans" - to add that to the wisdom you have learned from God; but behind it all is another god. These circumstances call for speaking. What are you going to do? We are called upon to speak. We may be prone to think that speaking is the weakest thing that we can do. When Paul went to Ephesus (Acts 19) he did not go with carnal weapons, but he brought down all the strongholds of the enemy; he spoke for God. He spoke in all the dignity of one who would bring God in, and he brought that stronghold down. Look at these three young men. The moment that they stand out for God the favour turns to fury. Ah, the music does not sound pleasant now. That which, perhaps, in other circumstances seemed so attractive, now becomes manifest in its true character. If you are not conformed to this world, to its fashions, to its manners, to its ways, and to its prince and god, you will find that favour may turn to fury; and then we see the worst that man can do. A furnace is the greatest destructive agency in man's control. A furnace heated seven times represents the worst that the world can do to you if you are faithful to Christ. Make no mistake about it, my dear young friend; that is what the world will do to you if it is allowed; but what we learn is this, that 'sent persons',
those who are faithful and speak for God, are supported by God. A furnace heated sevenfold means nothing to God! It is the merest trifle compared with the power of God; and we do well to note the result of the bold speaking of these young men, of the faithfulness that was prepared to say, "Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us ... But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods". The result of their speaking is that it was made known to all people, nations and languages - that the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego was a God that could deliver, that He was greater than any other god. I think I have indicated, dear brethren, in a very simple way what is on my mind. I trust it has been within the reach of even the youngest person. I cannot help feeling what possibilities for God there are in His people. If there were but a thousand devoted hearts, a thousand faithful persons - men and women, youths and maidens - a thousand faithful speakers - what it would be for God! I am sure the earnest prayer of each of us is that we may be united in this devotion and in this kind of faithfulness; that, having spent three days in holy surroundings shut off from the world, subject to the influence of heaven, and under the gracious service of divine Persons, we should go back to the daily duties of life spiritually invigorated, with a little added dignity, a little added intelligence, and with a deeper sense of the worthiness and the greatness of the One whom we serve.
Birmingham, May 1932AFFECTION KEEPING PACE WITH LIGHT
A NEWLANDS
GENESIS AS INDICATING THE MINISTRIES OF JOHN AND PAUL
C C ELLIOT
The love of Jesus, what it is,
None but His loved ones know. (Hymn 279)THE HOUSE OF GOD
H D'A CHAMPNEY
MINISTERING COMFORT TO ONE ANOTHER
J H TREVVETT
"I JESUS"
A E MYLES
SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATIONS
C C ELLIOTT
SUBJECTION
W J HOUSE
O day of greatest sorrow,
Day of unfathomed grief!
When Thou didst taste the horror
Of wrath without relief. SURPASSING EXCELLENCE
R BESLEY
SPEAKING AS SENT
A E MYLES