OCCUPATION WITH CHRIST
J. A. Gardiner
Exodus 22: 2; Proverbs 4: 23; Hebrews 5: 14
We were impressed, beloved brethren, on Lord’s day with the blessedness of the Lord’s supper, and how the love that is manifested in it in such fulness, such absoluteness, is to have its answer from us. How blessed in any measure to answer to the love of the Lord Jesus and minister comfort and joy to His heart. The assembly is equal to that; it is very wonderful. He came to secure the assembly, delivered Himself up for it (see Ephesians 5: 25). He has a company, a vessel, that is able to minister joy and satisfaction to every desire that He has as Man. How wonderful that is. It is part of divine purpose.
The book of Exodus, like every other book of the Bible, is a wonderful book. It starts with the servant—there has been a lot of teaching about it—Moses was taken up, the true seed comes to light, in a man of the house of Levi (see Exodus 2: 1), scriptures that are often used amongst us. Moses was taken up of God; he has to be trained, has to be helped. It is a great book of experience, a book of elderhood; Egypt is exposed in it. Pharaoh is exposed in it, all the self-sufficiency
of the Egyptian world is exposed in it, and Moses has to learn what it is to be humble, how he has to be changed from being a man full of self-resource to a man who is dependent upon God, and who can be named the meekest man upon the earth (see Numbers 12: 3). What a change! That is what God is able to do, beloved brethren. We need to take great encouragement from that and to come out of Egypt with a high hand (see Exodus 14: 8), not seeking to have anything more to do with it. We find that what we once had our joys and our pleasures in becomes a wilderness to us; things that once would satisfy our affections we find are barren and arid and fruitless and there is nothing there to minister joy to our hearts; we are dependent on divine grace.
We come to these chapters that are full of the bounty of heaven; how wonderful they are. God provides manna; He provides wood to take the bitterness out of Marah (see Exodus 15: 25).
Young believers meet Marah early, we meet Marah often, beloved brethren. Thank God that the wood has been cast in, the waters have become sweet. We find that there is a place of refreshment, a place of resource, we come to these seventy palm trees and twelve springs of water (see Exodus 15: 27).
We come through the book to Exodus 21 upon which the whole law, the whole truth, hinges, a wonderful chapter that sets out the blessedness, the devotion, of the Hebrew bondman. That is before us in the Lord’s supper. Probably there is hardly a Lord’s day goes past but there is some reference made to the fact that He said distinctly, “I love my master, my wife, and my children, I will not go free” (Exodus 21: 5). How we delight to go over these things, to go over them in the Gospels, to see how He could have gone free, how He said to them, “I am (he)”(John 18: 5), manifesting His power in that sense—“They went away backward and fell to the ground” (John 18: 6). Then the prophet says that He hideth His power; Habakkuk brings that out (see Habakkuk 3: 4). Oh what a hiding of His power there was when He said, “If ... ye seek me, let these go away” (John 18: 8), showing that He was saying distinctly that He loved His master, His wife, and His children, He would not go out free. He went into death, glorified God upon the earth; “I have glorified thee on the earth, I have completed the work which thou gavest me that I should do it”, John 17: 4. Oh what language that is, beloved brethren, how fully Jesus has accomplished the will of God in all its fulness. And we look at that, we feed upon that.
Exodus 21 is very wonderful. The answer to that in the service of God is in chapter 24 where they go up; that is the answer to it, God is answered to. They accept the divine proposal, there is an answer to it substantially, to that devotion, so much so that Moses sends the youths of the children of Israel to offer up burnt-offerings (Exodus 24: 5), and then you get “seventy of the elders of Israel”. Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, the priesthood, they go up into the presence of God and they eat and drink, in some way a foreshadowing of the liberty of sonship and the blessedness of what is for the heart of God in His service.
Chapters 22 and 23 are critical chapters. You get the thought an ox might break out and gore a man, and then a thief might break in. These are chapters in which we are tested as to how we can hold our affections, how we can be sustained with our affections upon the true Hebrew Bondman. Can we go through the week seeking in some measure to follow Him, taking on the features of bondmanship? The gospel teaches us how to become bondmen, how we are to begin by obeying from the heart the form of teaching, Paul says, “into which ye were instructed”,
Romans 6: 17. Then you begin to appreciate all that God is towards you in the glad tidings, and learn to “yield”—beautiful word that in Romans—“yield your members in bondage to righteousness unto holiness”, Romans 6: 19. You are having to do with God’s attributes and then you are having to do with His nature, and you are learning what it is to be a bondman.
Then you come out in priesthood as a result of it. The high priest of Exodus 28 is the bondman of Exodus 21, and we become priestly, I think, as we take on these features of bondmanship, learn to submit to the will of God, learn to prefer it to our own wills, to our own desires, so that you present your body—that is a priestly action present your body a living sacrifice (see Romans 12: 1). The brethren know these chapters well, but these chapters are critical because we must be on our guard, we have to watch; the thief breaks in, the devil is set against the brethren going through the week as held, securely held undefiled for the service of God. Our brother referred in his preaching to the robbers in Luke 10. They left the man in a half-dead state; that is the idea, you know, that is the devil’s intention. He would leave us all eventually in a wholly-dead state, not a half-dead one; so we need to keep our hearts, that is the wise word of the preacher, Solomon.
We need to learn to do that, “Keep thy heart”, he says, “more than anything that is guarded; for out of it are the issues of life”. Well, these words are all very instructive. If you get a new Bible or a new hymn book this is one of the things that somebody might write in it. You might think, Well, that is father just putting something down; but no, think about these things.
Just read it and go over it, “Keep thy heart”, Solomon says, “more than anything that is guarded”. Do not let the thief break in on your affections; he would seek to break in with features of the world, features of the earth, or whatever it might be. The ox breaks out. That is violence. This thief breaking in is a subtle thing. These are the two great modes of Satanic operation, violence and corruption. We need therefore to have a good security system and know what it is to keep ourselves secure. He that is of God “keeps himself”, it says, “and the wicked one does not touch him”, 1 John 5: 18. The world is concerned, governments are concerned, about security systems; they go to great measures of technological advancement to keep places secure, and yet over there in London not so long ago somebody walked into the Queen’s bedroom. You would think there is not a place more secure than Buckingham Palace, yet it was proved to be vulnerable; so you see how easily the devil can get into your heart. That is how incessant he is to bring in something that will divert your affections from Christ.
I thought this word in Hebrews would help us to see that we are to come on to solid food; I think that would be the gospels; this food belongs to full-grown men. Live in the gospels, learn the gospels; learn what those men of God who have led in the recovery have said about them; find out about Matthew, find out about Mark, and Luke and John, and get to know the Man they present in the gospels. Oh, what solid food that is. It is not milk exactly—milk is necessary—and we get to the gospels by way of the epistles and we get to the epistles by way of the Acts. We know the teaching of these things, but how good it is to be able to pick up the Bible—and the Lord would help us to do that—at Matthew, or Mark, or Luke or John, or any scripture for that matter, to pick it up and find that the whole thing becomes alive. Jesus has come into the word. That is solid food; it is good food; that is substance; that is something to chew upon, and you find then you are developing in your affections, maturing in your affections. Our brother has said that we are to consider for the saints; this is how to do it.
Think about Christ; feed upon Him; you are bound to make way for the brethren. The only way to love the saints is to feed upon Christ, to have Him before us as our object.
Oh what food there is in the gospels! Think of Him saying, “he ... who eats me shall live also on account of me”, John 6: 57. You have got to eat His flesh and drink His blood, you have got to have to do with His death, to feed upon His death, before you can come through to feed upon Him alive. He said, “As the living Father has sent me”; what a system of glory Christianity is, beloved brethren; we are to feed upon Him as a glorified Man in that system; “he ... who eats me”, He says, “shall live also on account of me”. That kind of life is really worth living. You find then that you come through to Exodus 24 and are able to ascend. They went up; it is not only resurrection, but it is ascension. You see the glory of the Father’s realm, the wonder of it, and you find that the love of that Man surpasses knowledge. “To know”, Paul says, “the love of the Christ which surpasses knowledge”, Ephesians 3: 19. So you come down, your senses are exercised; on account of habit you have got your senses exercised, and you keep yourself in the love of God. To discern what is counterfeit requires us to be always occupied with what is good, what is right. Mr. Darby said, I think, that the way to have peace within and power without is to be always and only occupied with good.
Oh what a positive range of things there is for us to be occupied with, beloved brethren, and thus we shall be preserved, we shall be secured, and find that the devil does not get in upon us,
because he will seek to break in, either on the violent line or on the corrupt line. Well, may the Lord help us to be more and more engaged with Himself, for His name’s sake.
Word in meeting for ministry, Toronto
5 October 1982