“THE GOD OF ALL ENCOURAGEMENT”
A. J. E. Welch
One thing that, in the Scriptures, God is said to be is “the Father of compassions, and God of all encouragement” (2 Corinthians 1: 3), and I want to speak very simply of the kind of encouragement that God gives, especially at critical times. He would love to use a season like this to encourage us, because of the peculiarly momentous times in which we are; I speak of this in a positive sense. There is the side of crisis. That word has perhaps been too much in our minds, a fact which would maybe emerge from a realisation on our part that with God there are no crises. He has His hand on everything. What a comfort that is! We may have come to a particular point in church history where the reality of decline is brought home to us, in every sphere coming under our notice, save the sphere of God’s operations in grace and in power.
The Spirit of God would remind us of the imminence of what is final. What is final involves that the divine triumph over every adverse thing is to be asserted. Before God brings finality in He allows things to ripen, to disclose what they really are. If it is what we speak of as the great ecclesiastical system and the error that marks it, God brings it to a point where it is manifest. God is doing that in very many ways, but He would have us very close to Himself, and very sensitive as to what His heart is in such days as these; because His heart is not changed, His ideals are not changed. The Man whom He exalted is still the Man whom He has exalted. The place of power in which He has set Christ is still His place. He is the One of whom Scripture speaks that He has the power to subdue all things to Himself (Philippians 3: 21). It is not that He shall have, He has the power to do that. How wonderful it is to see Christ up there and to get the constantly stabilising touch to the soul of realising that He is established in pre-eminence; God has established Him in pre-eminence. The knowledge of that is in these hearts of ours.
And yet, rather like Elijah, I fear we sometimes become discouraged. God would say, ‘Do not look to circumstances for your encouragement; do not look to conditions in man’s world for encouragement. Look to Me for encouragement’. He delights to afford it. Elijah was very low, and I suppose that has been in the experience of all of us here at some time or in some circumstance. Things seemed very low. He “came and sat down under a certain broom-bush, and requested for himself that he might die”. What an outlook! Is this, in any sense at all, the outlook of any one of us here? It might not perhaps be in the full extent of what is conveyed in Elijah’s words, but is it in our minds, if I may use the expression, just to fade out? God would remind us that He has called us into His greatest things. He has not just suggested or imparted to us a knowledge of certain things, He has called us into His things. Scripture speaks of His calling us “into the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord”, 1 Corinthians 1: 9. That fellowship stands related to Christ personally in that gloriously dignified title, “his Son”, God’s Son; yet at the same time His immediate relation to ourselves, “our Lord”, is in view, and that is to govern the fellowship.
How are we in the fellowship? Is it a kind of positional matter with us? Is it just a question of where we go for meetings, and such like? What is our realisation of the real power of the fellowship of God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord? God has called us to that. He has not given us an option to find our part in it, He has called us into it. How are we answering to the call? It becomes increasingly precious, increasingly strengthening to us in such times as these, to find our part in life and in divine support in what belongs to the fellowship of God’s Son.
But to revert to Elijah, he was thoroughly discouraged. The circumstances were such that if he was occupied with them he might well be discouraged. The outward circumstances today are such that, from that viewpoint, we might well be, God would say, I will encourage you. Do not look elsewhere for your encouragement; He will give you the encouragement. Elijah said, “It is enough—now, Jehovah, take my life; for I am not better than my fathers”. Things are beginning to come out. He says he is not better than his fathers. Why should he seek to be? He is thinking of himself. How often we get turned in upon ourselves! God would say as we turn that way, ‘You will not find any encouragement there’. Here is a man who wants to be better than his fathers. Why should he be so? What does he want to be?
But then what happens? “An angel touched him, and said to him, Arise, eat!” He needs food. God has agencies under His hand just to bring in what is needed in the way of food.
One of the most vital things to strengthen us against discouragement is food. Where is our food? It is in Jesus, it is in Christ. It may be food for the wilderness, the Manna, as the type presents it; or it may be food for the land. Christ glorified in a sphere to which He fitly belongs, food that relates to the heavenly situation, the old corn of the land. Get your eye on Christ and feed, the Spirit of God would say. Let the light and glory of that Person really enter your soul, attracting you as it must, but becoming nourishment to you. Get a view of Jesus, not as He was (glorious as that was) but as He is, a view of Christ, the mighty Victor, the supreme One. He is not yet manifested in His supremacy, though soon to be so manifested, but He has immediately the power to subdue all things to Himself.
What Elijah sees at his head is “a cake, baked on hot stones, and a cruse of water”. That is, he has not only food, but refreshment. And what refreshment there is in the appreciation of Christ! What refreshment is to be known in the upsurge of the Spirit of God in your soul to make much of Christ, a living spring in yourself attaching your heart to Jesus where He is, and bringing right into you what relates to Himself. It is a cake baked on hot stones; prepared food, fresh food. It is not something that you have tasted before, stale through neglect, but the freshness of all that is in Christ; that is to become nourishment to persons who may be discouraged. What provision God has made for the very needs in detail of the pathway in which those who love Him are! “And he ate and drank, and lay down again”. This is an amazing happening, but he lay down again. God sometimes does test us out as to our deeper roots. Are we easily
discouraged, dear brethren? God would bring us right to the root to show us what the prime interests really are; the whole situation really is that Christ is supreme. He is about to come in the assertion of His rights. Everything here is being exposed in its true character as contrary to Him and contrary to divine thoughts, in view of His coming to take up His rights. But our portion is in Him and with Him where He is. Could there be any greater basis of encouragement than that? You belong to Christ; you belong to the scene in which the glory of Christ is shining; as to the testimony here you belong to the fellowship into which God has called you, which is abundantly furnished with every resource for its supply and sustaining until He come.
Elijah lies down again. It points to something which is very real in many of our experiences; for a time, maybe, we give earnest attention, and yet perhaps we still flag. We lie down again. But is God displaying anger with His servant? “The angel of Jehovah came again the second time, and touched him, and said, Arise, eat; for the journey is too great for thee”. The angel is adding something this time, “The journey is too great for thee”, as if he would say, ‘It is a matter of urgency that you get fully nourished and prove the support that God shall give’. Let there be no looking to oneself for support. The word is, It is too great for you. Who of us could fill out in any strength of his own any part in the testimony related to God’s glorious Son? Maybe we have been trying to; perhaps that is how the discouragement came in. You are not on the journey on the basis that the supply is to come from you. God has called you into His matters on the basis that the supply is with Him, especially in the Spirit, and the supply
is entirely adequate. But you must feed. You must appropriate all that God has established in Christ. Find for yourself, in your own experience, not only the love of Christ, but the power He has to come into your soul and to strengthen and stimulate you as He does it. Get a view of Christ and see how He is in full charge of every circumstance in the testimony here; as being so He has charged Himself to see you through, as you are committed to His testimony, because the thing is too great for yourself anyway.
It says of Elijah, “And he arose, and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God”—a fine destination, a getting back to God’s prime thoughts. I suppose Horeb would stand for the divine thoughts in their full, glorious, original character, not modified by human thoughts nor adjusted in their balance by human ideas, but the divine thoughts just as they really are. He is getting back to the excellence of what is in the mind and heart of God for those who love Him, a place with Christ, a place in the glory, and a place in regard of the prime position of the assembly as with Christ ultimately in the exercise of His headship. Let us feed on these things, dear brethren. How much the Spirit of God has given us to instruct us in them. Maybe the instruction has entered our minds, but has it commanded our hearts? That, perhaps, is the point for us today, the place that Christ has as dwelling in our hearts by faith.
Elijah goes on this long journey; forty days and forty nights, in the strength of that food. He has learnt a lesson. It is not in his own strength, it is in the strength of that food that he goes. What an experience for Elijah! He
still has a certain way to go. The Spirit of God is going along with this man. He wants him thoroughly settled. God’s encouragement is like that. He wants us thoroughly settled, not to be encouraged today and discouraged tomorrow, not to be flagging today and urgent tomorrow. He would have us steady in divine strengthening to pursue what may need to be pursued.
So Jehovah says to him, “What doest thou here. Elijah?”. Maybe that question is one that the Spirit of God would raise with each of us today. ‘What doest thou here?’. He is seeking to establish what is really in Elijah’s soul as to where he is, not necessarily to condemn him, “What doest thou here, Elijah?” The prophet is to be brought into the realisation that he is in relation with God—that God has called him into His matters, and is abundantly supplying him with food, food that it would seem he had never tasted before. He stands in relation to God. God has proved from His side how He stands in relation to His servant in abundance of supply; but now how does the servant stand in relation to God?
Have we taken up matters responsibly for God in His interests? Am I in the local meeting that way? Do I undertake my daily duties that way, as having Christ’s interests as my prime interest? Have we an understanding with God as to that? “What doest thou here, Elijah?”. Why are you here? What are you doing? What is your objective? Poor Elijah! “I have been very jealous for Jehovah the God of hosts”. Self-occupation is a most tenacious thing; it is something that the Spirit of God would help us to meet by engaging us with Christ, and sustaining our engagement with Christ; yet He comes in in grace, in the firmness of His own word, just to challenge the situation.
So the blessed God takes in grace a certain course of instruction with His servant. He is caused to see certain very impressive things, and each of them is covered by the simple statement that God was not in it. God is not acting that way. There were certain lines of action, ways of acting in the assembly, alas, in which we had our part, and alas it would seem that they are still current. God would say to us, I am not in that; that is not the way; He is applying Himself to matters in this time in grace. Elijah hears “a soft gentle voice”. That is, God is still speaking; He is still conveying things, still making known His mind, yea, and insisting on His mind too. “A soft gentle voice”—Oh, the grace in this, beloved brethren, that gives us to see how God is working from His side. That would dispel human thoughts, human ideas, entrenched thoughts that may have come, not from God, but from man.
“A soft gentle voice. And it came to pass when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entrance of the cave”. That, I believe, is a critical point in a positive sense, “He wrapped his face in his mantle”. He was, having to do with God. His eyes were not to see God. He was in a right fear of God, and even for us in this time of grace, beloved brethren, there is a right fear of God, a recognition that God has His rights in matters; the matters are indeed His matters, and no one of us is to trifle with His matters or under-rate them in any sense. It seems as if Elijah comes to that, and the word again comes, “What doest thou here, Elijah?”. He is still clinging to the same statement, still saying the same thing. It is to show us, I believe, that God is going on and He will not have us stand in His way. He is going on very patiently, but in His patience He is insisting upon His on rights, the rights of Christ, the rights of the Spirit.
So eventually Jehovah says to him, “Go, return on thy way”. He gives directions, clear directions, directions that have in mind that the testimony is to continue. Thank God, Elijah’s later course would show that God wrought wonderfully yet in this man. But even when Elijah is still saying the same thing about himself, God breaks in, and tells him that he is to go forward and do this, and this, and this, including the anointing of one to whom he was to pass this touch of prophetic power in due time. The testimony is to go on, and God is saying to Elijah, ‘I have brought you into this and I am insistent that you continue in it’. And He adds, “I have left myself seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth that hath not kissed him”. What a disclosure—seven thousand! God makes such disclosures to us, as to the real value of what He has. He delights to disclose it for the encouragement of true hearts that may for the time have become over-occupied with the negatives, over-occupied with themselves; this is a baneful thing, prevalent in the history of a good many of us. God would say, Your encouragement is to be from Me.
The testimony is going on, and God has in that testimony what fitly belongs to Him in the pursuit of it, and He is going to carry it through irrespective of us. Yet how much He has invested in this man in the patience of His way to bring him fully into matters, the matters that are to go on to the finish. Let us think about it that way, beloved brethren. How much God has lavished in
gracious supply upon us to have us fully with Him in what He is doing. He would assure us that what He is doing is going through to completion, but He would search our hearts, stimulate our affections, and encourage us, that we might go right through until the Lord comes—divinely fitted, divinely nourished, divinely supplied, and if need be divinely awakened to the true greatness of the whole situation as it is according to God. May He help us in this, for His name’s sake.
Address at Barnstaple
12 June 1974