AVAILABILITY FOR DIVINE USE

A. V. Way

1 Samuel 3: 1, 10; Isaiah 6: 1–8

I was thinking of the state wherein we can become available to divine Persons for service. It is good that we are together in another occasion, gathered to the name of the Lord—not the occasion of showing forth His death till He come, but one in which we look to Him to speak to us. It is very comforting to think of His words at the end of Matthew, “Behold, I am with you all the days, until the completion of the age”—right on to the very end. It is almost two thousand years since He said that. Through grace, by the Holy Spirit, the report has come down to us. Something of that was occupying us in the reading on Lord’s day, “So faith then is by a report, but the report by God’s word”, Romans 10: 17. So all of us have been the subjects of a report, probably coming through our parents, certainly in the meetings by the constant service of the Spirit. Thank God for the assemblings of the saints throughout the years, and the work of God proceeding. We have all sat under the sound of the word, the gospel, and the opening out of the truth in our reading meetings and other occasions. So right down to this time the Lord has been with His people. He is with us now, just a few of that great company forming His assembly. It is very encouraging and strengthening. The source of the strength is not from us.

Paul, addressing the Corinthians, says, “I was with you in weakness” (1 Corinthians 2: 3); “I did not judge it well to know anything among you save Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (verse 2); “and my word … not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (verse 4). Something of that can come into our occasions as the Lord is made way for. We each, through the days, through the week, will be concerning ourselves, I trust, that we may be increasingly in the presence of the Lord, communing with Him. How we need these experiences! What a place of temptations it is. We do not want to be novices as to the artifices of the devil, and the weakness of the flesh, but to be strengthened by the Spirit.

Things come into our minds, unbidden thoughts, or something defiling which we may see, the flesh seeking to get a place, but we can relate to it the principle seen in Romans 8: 14, “As many as are led by the Spirit of God”. So, at that moment, am I being led by the Spirit of God? We are to become more sensitive and discerning as to what would be of profit spiritually, what it is the intent of God to effect in us. Now there is that which has come down from heaven—the Person of the Lord Jesus Himself, here in figure as a Man, manifesting the most wonderful standard of manhood, in which He suffered to effect the salvation of our souls. The testifying and searching out by prophets, as Peter speaks of them, all pointed on to the incoming of Christ and His sufferings. Oh what a blessed Person we have on whom to rivet our attention!

We are to be encouraged on these occasions, as there is a basis of true exercise proceeding in us.

What preceded the incoming of this boy Samuel we well know and often refer to—the depths of exercise gone through by his mother. I think that is what we need, depths in our exercises, not just being academic, or doctrinal, but marked by reality, that we are seeking to make progress, to gain substance and further and deeper impressions of the Lord and His affection for us, to be more in the reality of the fact that “Ye are not your own, for ye have been bought with a price”, 1 Corinthians 6: 19, 20. So restraint is to mark us. We are to be separate, concerned as to the teaching in Leviticus 11 as to animals clean and unclean—what we can, or cannot, appropriate. We had a reference recently to fish with scales that keep out damaging influences, and fins, so that there is power to go against the current of unprofitable influences or persons, or my mere natural mind. There is the present threat of what militates against the truth. The recovery of the truth in Mr. Darby’s time, frequently referred to, was quickly opposed by Satan, and spurious teaching was put out attacking the perfection of Jesus and His intrinsic fragrance to the Father. Gatherings were set up independently, and that line has been carried down in our times. Can we be sensitive as to this? What is in the ecclesiastical sphere, where Christ is not given the first place, needs to be avoided.

This boy Samuel was the product of much exercise, and there was in him this condition of soul to which Jehovah could entrust His mind, yet just a boy! It would be abnormal, we might say, but the man who should have been carrying responsibility was dull. It says, “And the word of Jehovah was rare in those days; a vision was not frequent”. How Jehovah must have felt it! Well, God had wrought in the circumstances of a sister to bring in this boy in whom He had great purposes to work out. He would encourage us to be in line with the greatness of His purposes. What wonderful things He has in view, all centring in Christ, soon to be brought into public expression, but now proceeding in a hidden way, including this little company here tonight. Who knows about it? Very few. Who cares about it as far as the world or Christendom are concerned? But we can have a sense of God being with us. We are not making anything of ourselves in saying that, but I am sure each of us here would experience a movement in our souls as we recognise the Lord being intensely interested in our having the word of God in our hands, and making way, by the Spirit, for His speaking to us, to strengthen us for another day in the pathway here prior to His coming. So Samuel is able to say, “Speak, for thy servant heareth”; there is that condition in this boy that Jehovah is pleased to answer and so use him, an instrument in His hands. He is able to testify to what he hears, and he grows and develops continually in the atmosphere of the

temple, and becomes a great help and power to Israel and to David. So God would bring about in each of us that which he can use in the testimony.

The passage in Isaiah shows that we need constantly to have a sense of the holiness of God, His majesty. Who could stand such an experience as depicted in this chapter? “Holy, holy, holy is Jehovah of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory! and the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke”. The foundations of the thresholds shook at His voice alone! And the man is convicted. “Woe unto me! ... I am a man of unclean lips”. He makes nothing of himself, he has no excuses. But God recognises an honest heart, and I think that is what is required with all of us, an honest heart which is constantly in the presence of God. He has His own way to meet the condition, by the glowing coal, the fire. How wonderful our God is! The day of grace has become possible because of what the Lord Jesus met in His death. Only He could endure vicariously the fire of the wrath of God. Our blessed Lord and Saviour gave Himself for us, and we trust in His shed blood. We are justified in the power of His blood, and saved in the power of His life (Romans 5: 9, 10). Well, it involves sensitivity on our side, conscious of God intervening in an experience which touches us, to effect a change in our condition. The seraph says, “Behold this hath touched thy lips”. Have we a sense of being touched by God in this way, so that we are cleansed and suitable for His service? Then the voice comes, “Whom shall I send?”, and he is able to say, “Here am I; send me”. May we be stimulated, brethren, to follow out exercises so the Lord can use us in our small and simple measure; it means much to Him.

Word in meeting for ministry, Melbourne
4 November 1986