CHAPTER 6
“Christ”, or “the Christ”, being a relative title as we have said (that is, one taken with relation to men), it becomes those who stand in this grace to know their relation to Him in the place He has taken, what He is there, and what the heavenly things are, so as to have some understanding of the greatness of that favour which has united us to Him. The Spirit is the means, hence we read,
“do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God”, Eph 4: 30. But the epistle having dwelt fully on this side, now descends to the order of the believer’s household on earth. To be consistent with the great truth of our heavenly relationship, here there must be subjection.
Subjection is inculcated first in the wife, then in the children, and then in servants. “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord”. “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is just”. “Bondmen, obey masters according to flesh”. When the husband is addressed the wife is looked at as his own body, and as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it, so ought men to love their wives as their own bodies, to nourish and cherish them, even as Christ took the church for His own, in order to make it according to His own mind and desire for it. “That he might present it unto himself all glorious, having no spot, or wrinkle, or any such things”, Eph 5: 27.
Masters are reminded as to their servants, that their Master, who knows no “acceptance of persons”, is in heaven.
Subjection and order are pre-eminently desired. No
one can be fully carrying out his earthly relations in responsibility to the Lord, who is not fulfilling his responsibility in the body of Christ, because in the heavenly he learns what becomes the earthly.
The wife then is taught subjection, and the husband
to love his wife, while a child is reminded that even under the law God desired obedience. The father is instructed not 287
to use his place of authority to provoke his child to wrath, while the Christian servant, often a slave in those days, is especially encouraged, since however little his services may seem to be appreciated, he shall of the Lord, who is looking on, receive his reward. “Bondmen [slaves], obey are your masters according to flesh … not with eye-service as men-pleasers, but as bondmen of Christ, doing the will of God from the soul, serving with good will as to the Lord, and not to men, knowing that whatever good each may do, this he shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free”.
Now Satan will ever seek to mar the display to others, and consequently my usefulness in the body, as well as the enjoyment by myself of my place in this union with Christ.
Now comes God’s provision against him in order that he may be frustrated, and that all may see, and that I may enjoy this, the fulness of God’s wondrous grace to me. What are these provisions? The Lord’s strength, the power of His might, and the whole armour of God. Think, my reader, you need all these, in order that you may carry out, consistently with the heavenly truth of your union with Christ, your daily duties and relations in this life. Power to be subject is invaluable, and is only learnt in the heavenly relationship.
I come from the greater to act in the lesser. Inability to act consistently in the local assembly, and in the home circle, shews that I have not learnt and received power for these two where alone it can be learnt and received. For you find yourself as a Christian united to Christ, your Head in heaven but face to face with Satan, who is prepared and determined to contest in your earthly calling every truth which you accept from God, and who has all the power of this world at his back. He is the god of this world, the mover of all its hidden springs (see 1 John 2: 6), and “the whole world lies in the wicked one”, 1 John 5: 19. But thank God that thus sustained and thus arrayed, you are proof against his every assault.
The armour is one complete whole, God’s defence for
me against Satan. In it we find the truth, the word of God, this is the first named constituent in it as well as the last.
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Between them, all is controlled by it. “It is written”, is the Christian’s stronghold, and before it the enemy must flee.
“Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth”, have also “the sword of the Spirit, which is God’s word”.
God expects that there shall be the diligent study of scripture so as to know how and when to apply His word to all that Satan presents. This study of scripture in private is greatly facilitated by the getting together at meetings for the study of the word, and where the word of God is ministered.
It is my armour against Satan, hence the great importance of it. It is provided that I may stand in this evil day— stand, note this, not fall and not retreat. When we are sustained and meet the enemy, in the simplicity of faith, it is Satan, not the believer who flees. “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you”, James 4: 7. It is from the Word that I learn what is right in the sight of God, what the gospel of peace is that should characterise my walk, what faith is as a shield; and the helmet of salvation, all to meet my adversary. Absolute weakness I am in myself, therefore prayer is my natural attitude as a Christian, and that not occasionally merely, but “Praying at all seasons, with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit”.
We have a great contrast in the way God helps those
who belong to Christ today, and those who were His in a former day. Christ, or the Christ, is now in relation to the heavenly company, as He was formerly in relation to the earthly. That all is reversed for this company is clear, and prosperity on earth as a mark of His favour, does not belong to those whose interests and expectations are centred in Him there. Who therefore “accepted with joy the plunder of your goods, knowing that ye have for yourselves a better substance, and an abiding one”, Heb 10: 34 NT. “Christ is
… all”. The Christian is blessed “with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ” (Eph 1: 3 now, and waiting the full introduction into them is (rightly viewed) in armour, and in peace, in the presence of all the activities of the foe. Hence the apostle concludes, “Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all them that love our 289
Lord Jesus Christ in incorruption”. May we know our portion better and enjoy it more, that in peace, the separate walk with God of a heavenly people may be seen on earth.
From A Voice to the Faithful—vol 24, 1890
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THE SAME PERSON BUT IN THE NEW PLACE
In this His last conversation with His disciples before the cross, and in permitting them, in chap 17 to hear also His requests to the Father concerning them, the Lord brings positively before them that they must henceforth know Him in a new place. In His ministry among them He had attached them to Himself. The consequence of this was that when He spoke of going away, sorrow filled their heart. This was the proper result of attachment to Him, and necessary in order to still attach them by faith to Him in that new place into which He was going. This place was their place, and He was going into it so that it should be prepared and secured to them. The proper result of love to a person is, that I want to share the place in which he is. On earth, because He was with them, they had “lacked nothing”, and He had kept them in the Father’s name. But we have come, in these chapters, to a moment when He can no longer remain with them here. His visible and holy bodily presence is to be withdrawn from them, and they are henceforth to know Him by faith. This is why He says, “Ye believe in God, believe also in me”, John 14: 1. But since His love remained the same, for He “loved them to the end”, He must have them still fit for the place of companions with Himself. Love—His to them, and theirs to Him, would detach them then from the place which He had left, while His own care would secure their fitness to share with Him (“If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me” (John 13: 8)) by faith, in companionship still, in that new place. He was going into the Father’s house. He had known it fully as a Man upon earth, had dwelt ever in it, in conscious relationship with the Father. They were henceforth to know it for themselves.
It was to be for faith now, for He was actually going into it.
Hence the necessity of His going away, since their hearts rested as long as He was here, and rightly too, in the fact of His visible presence with them and in His care of them.
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He seeks to put them by faith into the joy of the place which He had enjoyed while yet upon the earth. To this end two things are necessary: He must take His place on high, and by washing their feet secure their fitness for it, and the Comforter must come down to be in them, the power of communion. The Lord must go up, and the Comforter must come down.
When come He would guide them into all truth, and,
as indwelling them, would also be the power by which they would enter into the reality of their true relationship with Himself and with the Father. Hence He says that in the day of the Spirit’s presence upon earth (as sent down to abide with them for ever) they would know Him (Christ) as in the Father, “and ye in me, and I in you”, John 14: 20. They would also have a present joy in the knowledge of it, a joy which He had known while down here. He says, “These things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves”, see also chap 15: 11. But not only this, He was also coming again to take them actually into the new place which His presence in it in the meantime secured for them. “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also”, John 14: 2.
If He sat as a man, wearied with His journey, by the well-side, this weariness the disciples could easily understand; but when He was visibly refreshed with no apparent human means of refreshment—or when He could calmly sleep amidst the storm—this they knew nothing about. Consequently He has to explain it. “I have meat to eat that ye know not of”, He says. “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work”, John 4: 32, 34.
“Man shall not live by bread alone”, Matt 4: 4. He spoke the Father’s words, and did the Father’s works, and the Father dwelt in Him, see John 14: 10-12. He could say, “I do always those things that please him” (John 8: 29), and He speaks on earth of Himself, as “the Son of man who is in heaven” (John 3: 13), for this was the sphere wherein He 292
ever abode and whence He ministered to all. “My Father’s business” (Luke 2: 49) was His only occupation here. He began and ended this path of faith; hence He is said to be
“the author and finisher of our faith”, in Heb 12: 2.
Now by the Lord’s going away, the Object which had
made this world tolerable to His disciples was removed from them. More than this would be also true, for the same world had hated and crucified Him (this they would see), and though they had sorrow, the world would “REJOICE” that He was gone. And they were to know that this was the world in which He was leaving them.
All this instruction was necessary to wean them from this present scene. Faith in Him is to be henceforth substituted for the visible bodily presence of the Lord among them; but nothing would be lost to them by the change (as we have already remarked), since they would, by the presence of the Holy Ghost, enter more distinctly into the path which He had trodden in communion with the Father as a man upon earth, a path of full daily rest, and satisfaction, and joy; which was to be theirs now; until that day when He would come to take them to be for ever with Himself.
I think we always learn to value a person before we
learn to attach any value to the place in which the person is. There was in them real affection for Him; this He knew, and they could and did tolerate the place (this world) when He was in it. But now He would have them in it (as He had been) with their hearts outside it, as His always was—‘ in the world but not of the world’. This is the order—personal affection for Him, and then by faith I leave the scene where He is not: I want to be with Him. He wants them to find that their only place is to be where He is, and when He has left this world, they cannot, He says (wonderful confession from Him of the feeble love that was in them), find their home in it. So for their comfort He says, “I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also”. And in the close of His prayer respecting them, when committing them to the Father’s care, He says, “Father, I 293
will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world”, John 17: 24.
In the meantime may we, as another has said, ‘Dwell
e’en now where we shall be’. In the beginning of John 13
the Lord is leaving this place; in chap 14 He enters and prepares another place; that is, He enters in body the place He had ever enjoyed as the perfect Man of faith (John 3: 13) and into which He says He will bring them in body too (chap 17: 24); but until that time, they are, while still on earth, to enjoy by faith the place that they were going into (as He had); they were now in communion with Himself, and with the Father, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
May we by simple faith give up this place (Phil 3; 20), and be more and more preserved in the enjoyment of our own place—that scene of calm and cloudless rest where Christ now is.
From A Voice to the Faithful—vol 23, 1889
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There can be no doubt that the “Father’s house” is the place of all the sons, but I think it is spoken of in two ways in Scripture. In one way it is the place that the Father’s heart has for the one who in self-will left it; man looked at as two sons, Luke 15.
Here we see that its precincts reach down to and touch the scene of famine, that is, this poor empty world. It is from the world that each of us has entered it. This is the aspect in which Luke regards it in chap 15. The boundaries of the “far country”, and the land where the “mighty famine”
is on all, are co-extensive. The father’s house is God’s resource for the son who has sought his resources elsewhere. Nearness (which is the knowledge of relationship) and supply are known within it, and only there. Entering, I am brought to God; I say Father, and thus the need is met, and the “music and dancing” have begun.
It is moral, and for the soul.
But there is yet another way in which the Father’s house comes before us, and that is, it is the place of the Son who never left it to enjoy His own will in the “far country” .
He has taken the place of the son who did, in order to give to him this, His own place. Marvellous grace! Its precincts here are limited to what Scripture calls “the holiest”, Heb 10. This may be entered upon and enjoyed now by the Spirit (John 14: 20), but I think any one can see that it is a far higher aspect of the house than the other. I believe we touch it in the assembly, Heb 2: 11, 12. This is the Father’s house as it is set before us in John 14: 2, 3. “Part with me”
(John 13: 8) is the present enjoyment of it on the earth. But this is conditional; it depends on our allowing Him to wash our feet. No one could enjoy it who had not placed himself unreservedly in Christ’s hands, though it is for us all alike, see John 17: 26.
This is the house that we are going into actually. “In My Father’s house ... I go to prepare a place for you”, John 14: 2. Having prepared it now, He will presently receive us 295
unto Himself. This shows us that He gives to us His own place. He receives us to Himself. There we actually are to be, and with Him forever!
From Words of Encouragement—vol 5, 1899
EXTRACT FROM LETTER
How clear it is that everything has to go that is not of love. Love is the display of the divine nature, but only formed in us as we can contemplate it in God and in the way that He has been pleased to manifest Himself to us.
“God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him”, 1 John 4: 16.
“He will rest in his love”, Zeph 3: 17. This is a wonderful word. He will rest in what He has formed Himself.
How little it makes man! But if we are to be formed after it how necessary that it should be much before us. The Spirit forms these affections, I think, and these are the life of the saint.
From Words of Encouragement—vol 5, 1899
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LAST WORDS OF AN ENGINE-DRIVER
(Killed in the collision at Hampton Wick, 6th August 1888 26 )
“Don’t lift my head so high—my back is broken—it pains my back”.
“Send for my wife”.
“No, I shan’t get over it; I am dying”.
(They told him his mother was come.)
“Mother, where are you? I can’t see you now; but don’t grieve for me, mother. It was not my fault. Thank God it was not my fault”.
“I am going home to my blessed Lord Jesus. I found Him in life, and He is now with me in death …”
“Don’t cry, mother. It is I who grieve for you. I only grieve for you, mother, for I am afraid you have not come to Jesus.
Don’t put it off, mother; you must come to Him. Oh! don’t put it off. I—I am going home to Him—going home”.
(And thus he “fell asleep”—Acts 7: 60.)
Reader, have you come to Jesus? People come to everything else. They come to their law-keeping, their feelings, to the amount of their faith, to their morality, yea, to anything of theirs, but not to Christ. You must come to Him to get relief, to get salvation, to get life. Come to Jesus.
“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”, Matt 11: 28.
26 The accident occurred just before midnight on 6 August. A goods train routed on to the wrong line ran into a passenger train from Waterloo just outside Hampton Wick station; 4 people were killed—AB
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Hark, sinner, while God from on high doth entreat thee, And warnings with accents of mercy doth blend;
Give ear to His voice, lest in judgment He meet thee:
‘The harvest is passing, the summer will end.’
How oft of thy danger and guilt He hath told thee!
How oft still the message of mercy doth send!
Haste, haste, while He waits in His arms to enfold thee :
‘The harvest is passing, the summer will end.’
Despised and rejected, at length He may leave thee;
What anguish and horror thy bosom will rend!
Then haste thee, O sinner, while He will receive thee:
‘The harvest is passing, the summer will end.’
The Saviour will call thee in judgment before Him;
Oh, bow to His sceptre, and make Him thy Friend!
Now yield Him thy heart, and make haste to adore Him;
‘Thy harvest is passing, thy summer will end.’
LETTER TO AN UNDECIDED ONE
I have often, of late, asked myself how it is you do not decide for Christ as Percy the driver did, and as in mercy some of us whom you know have done. It is no disgrace to take up the confession of His Name, and if you once do it, remember He is able to give you strength to carry it out. But you must make a start. You must begin, and that beginning is to receive, and then confess Christ as your Saviour, and then, as a follower of Christ—that is, a Christian—read the New Testament to see how you should live and act. I believe that this is the one step left for you to take. I think that you do believe the word of God—the Bible—only you have not yet had the courage to join those who are not ashamed to let others know that they do, and are Christians. What is there to be ashamed of in being willing to own that I am trusting Christ and His word, which says that when He died 298
He died for all, and if for all, then for me? Can a man save himself? Read for yourself that He “died for all” in 2 Cor 5: 14, 15; then read in 1 Cor 15: 3 that ‘He died for our sins;’
and then that “the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from ALL sin”, 1 John 1: 7. Not some sins, mind, but ALL; all gone, and gone for ever, from God’s presence.
Then step out boldly and say, ‘I believe it’, spite of Satan, who, even while you are reading this, will try to hinder your soul from passing into perfect peace; but (turn and read it for yourself in Rom 15: 13) joy and peace come only from believing, not from doing, or any other thing.
Safe for eternity, and saved by this believing, which is only another name for faith (Rom 5: 1 and 1 Cor 15: 2), do not let Satan hinder your entering into it by suggesting that you will fail to act up to it. Tell him the truth; that is, that “he is a liar” from the beginning (John 8: 44), and that God, who has kept others—and many very weak ones too—
can keep you, and if you do fail can restore and lead you on.
Say, ‘I do believe it now, at this moment, and I will trust God for the future’. May you step out, like a child in obedience, and say this openly to others.
From Tidings of Life and Peace—vol 1, 1889
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“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud”.
In this day of grace there is always a bow in the cloud.
We may be, and sometimes are, so occupied with what is most manifest, the cloud, that we do not discern its heavenly accompaniment; but there it is. Bright and lovely, it stretches from heaven to earth. “All things work together for good to them that love God”, Rom 8: 28. Yes, all things.
This is the bow in the cloud. What a wide expanse this “all things” opens up to us! Even pain is God’s servant for good to a believer; and so is an earthquake in the world, or a moral convulsion or heresy in the church, 1 Cor 11: 19.
A great and strong wind may have “rent the
mountains”, and “brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord”, 1 Kings 19: 11. This may be followed by an earthquake, and the earthquake by a fire; but though they are the visible cloud, we must not be wholly occupied with these, 1 Kings 19. The question for us is, What has the Lord to say to us in them? The object to Him is His people, and we must listen for the “still small voice”, v 12. This is the bow in the cloud. If God has swept away man once in the judgment of the flood, the cloud, whatever it be, is afresh declaring His estimate of the first man. If mercy has declared itself, and we are spared, still we must never forget that His estimate of what we are stands recorded, and that very cloud afresh witnesses to it. And the bow in the cloud declares His faithfulness to His promise; for “His mercy endureth for ever”, 1 Chron 16: 34, &c.. We are on the ground of MERCY
and if we forget it, He does not. “It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of GOD THAT SHEWETH MERCY”, Rom 9: 16. We look at the cloud; God looks at the bow.
What grace is here! He says, “And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it”. The bow tells of God’s unchangeable faithfulness and mercy when all is over with man. This is the ground we are upon with God.
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“I bring a cloud ... I do set my bow”. We may not sever these two, nor look at one apart from the other. If it is good for us to be reminded that man (himself and his works) is only fit for judgment, it is good also to be reminded of what God is, or the soul must be overwhelmed with despair. Let us, then, “cease ... from man, whose breath is in his nostrils” (Isa 2: 22), and look at what God is looking at. “I will look upon it”.
This is the way to get God’s thoughts. We see that in spite of the cloud God is “for us”. Only we must be reminded of what we are, when we think high thoughts, not to drive us to despair, but to keep us low and to lean ever and only upon Him who has taken us up in grace, knowing all about us, and when there was not in us anything to attract Him.
My fellow-believer, in all the exercises of the way God would have us see the bow in the cloud. Think of this in your present trial (all permitted of Him), in that which distresses you most of all, and the existence of which no fellow-Christian perhaps knows of. These words are written for you. Is it trial in the church, trial in the business, trial in the house, or individually in yourself? “And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud”. Try to see it. It will put you right with God, and so cheer your pilgrim way. The cloud may be dark and gloomy, but there is a beauty in it painted by His own hand, and it tells you, spite of all, what He is to you. And, remember, whether you see it or not, IT IS THERE.
God sees a “need be” (1 Pet 1: 6) for the present trial in the church. We must be with Him to learn it. The whole experience of the wilderness is for us to learn what we are and what God is. The inclination of the natural heart is always to grow proud and independent. God, who knows the heart, saw this. As to the heart of man, “who can know it? I the Lord search the heart”, Jer 17. He knows it, exposes us to ourselves, and corrects us, and all for good,
“for our profit”, Heb 12: 10. May we each be so with Him at this moment, that we learn His mind in this trial; for good comes from God, even when it is in the shape of trial. If the 301
heart departeth from the Lord—and it does when we trust in man—we shall be “like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh”, vv 5, 6. We shall look upon the present trial and speak of it as ‘only another cloud’; and because of it we shall not see the good in the hand which surely is working through it for us, nor that it is “whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth”, Heb 12: 6. The word to us is,
“Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall lift you up”, James 4: 10. All is from Him, “that he might humble thee, and that He might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end”, Deut 8: 16. Let us remember His word:
“The bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it”. ‘We change; He changes not’.
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 17, 1890
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THIS BLEATING OF THE SHEEP ...
AND THE LOWING OF THE OXEN WHICH I
HEAR?”
It is important to remember that we “are not under
the law, but under grace”, Rom 6: 14. Israel was under grace when Amalek came and fought against them, Exod 17. They had not yet placed themselves under the responsibility of keeping the law, and thus made themselves dependent for blessing on their own obedience.
Now, though we are “not under the law, but under grace”, the flesh is not changed. The old nature remains, and Amalek (a type of Satan) can still use it. The Lord had in grace given them water, a supply for the desert, in v 6, as He has also in perfect grace given to us the Holy Spirit.
Amalek opposes at once this state of things. The people overcame by the intercession of Moses, as we overcome by the intercession of Christ; but the Lord swears that He “will have war with Amalek”—that is, with Satan—“from generation to generation”, Exod 17: 16. Only Moses’ hands were heavy, and he had to be sustained, and the victory was ebbing and flowing. Christ is never thus; and hence the Christian dependent on Him can always say, “we are more than conquerors through him that loved us”, Rom 8: 37.
All our troubles, individual trials as well as conflicts in the church, come through the flesh. Satan would be no trial to us, did not the flesh exist, on which he can and does act. I ought to treat the promptings of the flesh in me as Satan (Amalek), God’s enemy and mine. It was thus the Lord treated it in Peter. Apparently affection, or pity, or amiability; yet the Lord says, “Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men”, Matt 16.
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Do we thus treat the suggestions of the flesh? Alas!
no; and hence “this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear”. Amalek is spared, for the flesh is spared; and the disturbed and disturbing clang of voices in the camp comes from that which is spared, and which ought to be judged. Ah! but you say, Is there nothing good in me? One has said, “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh), dwelleth no good thing”, Rom 7: 18. But we are ready to respond, ‘I do not know it. Is not my morality, or my industry, or my religion to be of some account?’ Saul thought so. He thought there was a best and a worst side to be considered, as you do; and while he would not defend the worst, he pleaded for and spared the best. Do you think Satan has a best side in the eyes of God? The flesh came from Satan, not from God. But “Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good”. Why? “To sacrifice unto the Lord thy God”, he says to Samuel, “in Gilgal”. Yet God had said, “Go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have”. Something “good” from
this flesh of mine for God! Something I can excuse. A corner in my heart on which I write, ‘This is reserved from judgment’. This thing is not, in God’s account, wholly gone in the cross! Alas! it is easy to write and exhort. But what are we going to do? What am I sparing which you know nothing about? What are you allowing which I know nothing of? We are hindering if we are not helping the peace of the whole company.
And to spare the flesh, though only in its best form, is to spare “Agag the king of the Amalekites”. Ah! you had no thought of sparing him—God’s great enemy—when you pitied yourself, and allowed the flesh, in its politest and gentlest form, a little space. Is it any wonder that there is a disturbed clang of voices in the camp, where God dwells among His people? or that there should be confusion in your own soul? Ishmael is allowed a place in that house, and there is no quiet or peace known in it. “As then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now”, Gal 4: 29.
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Do you not hear “this bleating of the sheep ... and the lowing of the oxen”? What means it in your own heart?
What means it among God’s people? May we be willing to take the true place of owning that we have ministered to this state of things, and judge ourselves in His presence who smites us, but only that He may heal us; that in private and in ways unknown to each other the flesh has been spared, and hence the multitude of voices filling the air. God cannot accept that which we spare. The word to us is, “thou hast rejected the word of the Lord”. Oh, may the Lord give us to be simple, and to be real in private and individually, as to these things!
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 17, 1890
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CHRIST
WHETHER IN ASSOCIATION WITH HIM ON
EARTH OR IN HEAVEN,
AND GOD’S “AMEN” TO BOTH
God’s purpose for heaven and for earth, is to bring man into joy in Himself. “We joy in God” (Rom 5: 11), and having touched this which is His purpose for us; our continuance is continuous joy!
God is the source, as He is also the theme of all true joy. We have an illustration that it is so in the Psalms. God is before the writers, either for prayer (resource) or praise.
For instance, in the titles of some (which are part of the Psalm itself), such as Ps 65, 66, &c, “A Psalm or Song”, it is more praise to God; in others, as Ps 90, &c, it is more an appeal or prayer to Him. “A prayer of Moses the man of God”. Then the closing Ps 146, 147, 148, 149, 150 form one loud burst of praise to God. He is the theme. Blessing has commenced for the earthly people, and one long, loud hallelujah chorus, ushers in the glorious day. We have Israel first and then the nations. And this blessed hallelujah chorus not only closes the five books of Psalms, it closes also man’s earthly responsible history! It is the triumph song of man on earth.
In our Old Testament the prophets are placed last, but the Lord Himself gives us the true moral order of man’s course in time and in responsibility. “The law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms”, Luke 24: 44. This is not the order of them in our Bible. In the law man first accepted responsibility, and the consequence was total failure; second, in the prophets, there was his recall to it and again failure, proving that there is no good in man. But third, in the Psalms (which also declare this) (see Ps 14: 2, 3; 53: 2, 3) we begin with the blessed man on earth, but thence his history is interwoven with Christ’s. Christ takes 306
up before God all the broken down story of the first man, Ps 22, &c. And bears the judgment in the forsaking of God.
The end for the earth and for man on it is “Hallelujah”!
This “HALLELUJAH” is the answer to Ps 22: 27-29. It is said, “All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. For the kingdom is the Lord’s: and he is the governor among the nations. All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship”. It is the result for the earth of Christ’s death and sets man in blessing on the earth. Each of the last five Psalms commences with “Hallelujah”—the ascription of praise to God from the earth. See especially Ps 148, though it is contained in them all. “Praise the Lord from the earth”, &c. It is evident that we are amidst earthly circumstances here, and the last Psalm (150) closes with the same thought. “Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord”.
My second point is that there will be the united praise of a heavenly company—the triumph song of man in heaven. I think that this company is found in Rev 5 and 19: 1-7 in its own sphere, and distinct from the hallelujah of the earthly company. The church in Rev 5 is in heaven and unites in the praise of heaven, but this praise is not the full and peculiar blessing of the church. In Rev 5 the subject is the ‘worthiness of the Lamb’, and the united joy of the heavenly company (though not all complete), then in view of it, and in view of the establishment over the earth through His worthiness, of a kingdom of priests to God. In the proclamation of this worthiness she joins, (she is the bride, the Lamb’s wife), but her own exclusive and peculiar portion is not found here. In Rev 19 the praise of all the completed company in heaven is consequent on the judgment of Babylon, and that the marriage of the Lamb is come. Now I turn for a moment to the praise of Rev 5.
‘ And when it took the book, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, having each a harp and golden bowls full of incenses, which 307
are the prayers of the saints. And they sing a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open its seals, because thou hast been slain; and hast redeemed to God, by thy blood, out of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation, and made them to our God kings and priests; and they shall reign over the earth”, Rev 5: 8, 9, 10
NT. This is the song of the heavenly company, and what we read of here takes place in heaven. All heaven contemplates with delight the triumphs of redemption with reference to man a company for earth!
God’s good pleasure is to be “in men” through Christ, and God will thus accomplish all His purposes with respect to man whether we view him in association with Christ either in heaven or on earth. God’s purpose is to set Christ over everything in heaven and earth. This we see in these songs, but there is another matter, the affections of Christ.
These are with respect to the bride. Beside what we have looked at, His own love and her joy are distinct and peculiar.
Think of what both are, and of their gratification, when He shall present to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, Eph 5: 27!
The praise of men, both in heaven and on earth, is
founded on the death of Christ. My third point is God’s amen to the praise of both. I believe that this is found in His salutation to the ascended MAN. ‘‘Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec”, Ps 110; Heb 7!
In this salutation we have the assurance of the eternal continuity of man in these his relations God-ward, which Christ has established.
The maintenance of our eternal relations lies in Christ, the eternal Priest. With respect first to the company on earth, Melchisedec met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him. Israel is to be finally triumphant over the united kings of the earth. We may compare for this Zech 16: 2, 3 and Rev 19: 19, 20. The result is, blessing on the earth for His people, or what is generally termed the millennium, in which others (who lived 308
and reigned with Christ a thousand years) are associated.
The hallelujah day for the earth is come, according to the Psalms. “Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord.
Praise ye the Lord”, Ps 150: 6. Blessed day for this groaning creation! Moses’ last notes die away in similar strain when sung in view also of it. “REJOICE, O ye nations, with his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries, and will be merciful unto his land and to his people”, Deut 32: 43.
Everything for God and for us (everything for eternity therefore) depends upon the Priest. The priest is “ordained for men in things pertaining to God” (Heb 5: 1), and Christ will sustain two companies of men in relation to God for evermore. “Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec”. Why should the ‘ order’ be introduced here?
I think to shew its permanency. Sustainment and blessing are both eternal. Melchisedec brought forth bread and wine to Abraham. It was a ministry of sustainment and joy from His own resources, and Christ is Priest for ever after that order. Man is to be sustained through Christ in relation to God through all eternity. “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good pleasure in men”. God’s pleasure will be for ever “in men” (Luke 2: 14 NT); through the MAN of His counsel!
Second, Abraham is a figure of the heavenly company
through the promised seed. “If ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to promise”, Gal 3: 29.
The heavenly family will include all the Old Testament saints, that is, all who come into the first resurrection.
Abraham himself is one of these as we see from Heb 11.
Melchisedec, figure of the Son of God, comes forth for their blessing. “Every family in heaven and earth’’ will be sustained in relation to God through Christ, though the peculiar blessing of each will differ27. Christ, who thus 27 Ishmael is, I think, a figure of the Gentile nations, who come into blessing also through Abraham and Christ. Abraham says, “O that 309
sustains man in eternal relation and blessing with God is Himself “The Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God”. All centres and depends upon Him—blessed and secure dependence! “For whatever promises of God there are, in him is the yea, and in him the Amen, for glory to God by us”.
When God has thus added His amen to the value of
the work of Christ for man, whether seen on earth or seen in heaven, we enter on man’s eternity of blessing with God.
“The tabernacle of God is with men”, Rev 21: 3. Man in heaven and on earth in blessed unison, and God supreme in blessing.
I have one point more to say a word on, and that is
the effect on us now of the light of God, What should it be?
And what is it?
In order to reply to these questions we may first notice that the effect produced is worship, when the song of the heavenly company in Rev 5: 9, 10 is blended with that of the earthly company in Rev 5: 13. First we have the new song (those in heaven), then the assent of the angels, then the Hallelujah response from the earth, “Sing unto the Lord a new song”—that of the closing Psalms. “And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever”, Rev 5: 13. Then the “Amen”
closing all.
“And the four beasts said Amen, and the four and twenty elders fell down and worshipped”, v 14. The elders are intelligent in the ways of God, and His full triumph over every opposition is seen when He places man, and every company, in relation to Himself on the ground of the worth of the Lamb. If our spirits are at all in the light of this Ishmael might live before thee”, and God answers him that he shall.
Compare Gen 17: 18, 20 with 21: 13, 18. Ishmael was circumcised.
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blessed fact now, this will be the effect of the light of God upon us, namely, WORSHIP. Worship is the song in the heart. May the Holy Spirit in the assembly conduct our hearts into the blessedness of this worshipping spirit now.
We shall soon know it fully when we are with Him for ever.
From Food for the Faithful—vol 2, 1890
311
WHICH IS NOT ROMANS 7
NOR
THE ACTIVITY OF GALATIANS 5: 17
The Christian state is one of entire deliverance from a former one, and from a bondage of the soul under sin. It is not one of alternate hopes and fears, nor of striving for a holiness, which, as often as I strive, eludes my grasp, leaving me only more hopeless than before. Nor is it a state of present perpetual struggle between the flesh and the Spirit. It is a positive condition of blessing, a state communicated and entered upon by the soul in the power of the Spirit, when by faith he accepts the full value of the work wrought on the cross. In the soul in this state, there are found “love, joy, and peace”, the results of the indwelling of the Spirit of God. The Spirit is the seal of the faith which accepts the complete work of our Lord Jesus Christ, if a man is not in this state, it is an error to speak of him as in the Christian condition, or to call him a Christian.
But it may be asked, What state is that soul in where there is the experience of Romans 7 or the return to the condition of the Galatians? In reply, we may first note that the two are very different. The man in Romans 7 has never known deliverance, the Galatians had. And secondly, we may remark that whatever the state in each may be, neither is recognised by God as the Christian state. Therefore we are not bound to define them. For since the work of redemption was effected, there is first seen my state as dead in trespasses and sins—that is, distance from God—“having no hope, and without God in the world”, Eph 2: 12. And secondly, there is full deliverance from that state—my sins forgiven—sin, judged and condemned—nearness to God—
the old “I”, dead in God’s sight (and to be so accounted by me, Romans 6), and as to the new order there is a new creation before Him where “all things are of God”, 2 Cor 5: 18. Christ is in me and I in Him, and both are known in 312
the power of the indwelling Spirit of God. Now this is the only other state recognised in the word, and it is the Christian state.
The man in the experience of Romans 7 is not a Christian. “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his”, Rom 8: 9. It is clear that he has not the Spirit, nor what the Spirit gives the soul to know. No doubt he is on the road, but he knows neither deliverance nor relationship. The experience is that of a quickened soul under the law, which he confesses is “holy, just, and good”
(Rom 7: 12), which he desires to keep, but finds withal no power in himself to enable him to do so. This was the state in which a godly soul could be found before Christ’s death, no deliverance known. But it is not the Christian state since that death. “If the Son therefore shall make you free, then ye shall be free indeed”, John 8: 36. He came, that by His death He might deliver, and might bring those for whom He died into His own side, to know God in the relation of Father. He has ended the old condition, and when risen He says, “My Father and your Father, my God and your God”, John 20: 17. The Christian state is characterised by the indwelling of the Spirit, and relationship is known, so that in Rom 8: 2, 9, 11, 14, 15, the Spirit is the power that makes all this good to the soul. “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God”.
In Gal 5: 17, it is said, “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh”. As to the nature of these two, there will be always this opposition in the Christian, and it is the nature not the activity of the two in this verse. But this struggle while actively going on in the soul is not peace nor joy, nor the Christian state, for “They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts”, v 24. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Cor 3: 17); the flesh is kept in the place of death, and the fruits of the Spirit are found, “love, joy, peace” (v 22); and this is the Christian state, known when the soul accepts by faith the work of the cross as applied to, and ending in God’s sight, the flesh—that is, himself, as well as 313
clearing away his sins. The Spirit is then the power for
“love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, against such there is no law”.
Although the flesh is there it is no hindrance, it is as though it did not exist. Ishmael is reckoned out of the house, and the Spirit instead of being occupied with keeping down the flesh is there to minister of Christ, and to lead fully into the joy of the new order. It is a new state, the beginning of “love, joy, peace”, a new region entered upon, and a “new creation”
(chap 6: 15), where “neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision”, but where “all things are of God”, all struggle is ended, and the soul is free, where is peace within (“that in me ye might have peace” (John 16: 33)) and this is the right state for the conflict without.
The true Christian conflict is in Eph 6: 12, not in Gal 5: 17, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers …
of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places”.
Faith in the work of Christ is sealed of the Spirit. A CHRISTIAN has both.
From A Voice to the Faithful—vol 24, 1890
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TRANSLATED FROM THE KINGDOM OF
DARKNESS
INTO THE KINGDOM OF THE SON OF HIS
LOVE
When Israel was a slave in Egypt, groaning under the lash of the task-master, and when all their lives were made bitter with hard bondage—then God said, “Let my people go, that they may hold a FEAST unto me in the wilderness”, Exod 5: 1. Look at God’s thought here, and see what is in His heart. It is “my people”, and “ME”, and “a feast”. This is in God’s heart for us. A feast—one long uninterrupted day of joy with Him. Blessed contrast to all the sorrows of Egypt. “Bread without scarceness” (Deut 8: 9) is God’s thought for us, and a new period of time begins with Him and His people. “This month shall be unto you the beginning of months, it shall be the first month of the year to you”, Exod 12: 2. When? When they placed themselves under the shelter of the blood. The feast had begun, and with God’s provision, not that of man; and of this there can be no end. But what followed as to Israel? Did they
“continue in his goodness”, Rom 11: 22?
When the prodigal, in want and degradation (for in the midst of famine and among swine, what could be lower), turned his weary eye in the direction of his father’s house, its provision touched his heart. What did he think of? He thought of its fulness—of “bread enough and to spare”, and he knew and proved it was all for him. But when the feet of the poor wanderer had passed within the portals of the father’s house—when there yet lingered fresh upon his parched lips the father’s kiss—when he tasted the fatted calf, and the “music and dancing” had begun, then, indeed, he realised that the feasting day had come. The day of joy had begun, and there is not a sad heart in all the house. It echoes, and re-echoes its own joy, and all is in concert with the heart of the father. It is a little picture of the house and heart of GOD. Are you, through faith in Christ, inside that 315
house of feasting where God condescends to manifest His own joy over a repentant sinner? I do not say, Have you title to be there? because every believer has this; but are you abiding there in the experience of your own soul? “I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth”, Luke 15: 10. It is God’s own joy. It is present, and do you think it will or can ever cease?
In Eden, man was privileged to enjoy all with God.
Sin came in and spoilt all that, but God’s desire was seen in it, namely, man’s blessing with Himself. Who can read Gen 2: 9, 10, without seeing it? And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat”.
Creation breaks down in Adam, its head. Redemption comes in; and in Christ, God’s purpose is established on an immutable basis! There is a new creation now, where all things are of God.
Oh the grace, which has placed once poor vile sinners like I was, in it, and has made me, in Christ, fit for it too!
“If any ONE be in Christ, there is a new creation; the old things HAVare passed away; behold all things HAVe become new”, 2 Cor 5: 17 NT. “Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light”, Col 1: 12.
Now a defect, and it is a very grave one, after all that God has done, is the not enjoying our present portion.
Where is our faith? Surely Christianity brings into joy—a joy with God which can never end, Rom 5: 2, 11. How remarkably do we find that this was so with the early Christians. If we look at the prison in Philippi, we see it illustrated, Acts 16: 25. If we read the epistle to the Philippians we see it inculcated, Phil 3: 1-11. If we ponder the true Christian condition in both Colossians and in Ephesians, it is our joy now to be singing and making melody in our hearts unto the Lord. Consider the poor exile of Patmos, and it is the same with him. “Unto him that 316
loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood”, Rev 1: 5. God’s heart toward us has expressed itself, “I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are now ready, come”, Matt 22: 4. We are bidden to one long uninterrupted day of joy with Him.
In what God has done, and in what He is, we have obtained our joy and gladness, and “sorrow and sighing shall flee away”, Isa 35: 10. Is it so? This, and nothing less, is the portion of a Christian.
And I am changed by it. An effect is produced on me, and it is because God and His provision have become the soul’s portion, known and enjoyed. God is the object of faith, and He has been declared by the Son, and the Holy Ghost has come down to dwell in me that I may know and enjoy this revelation of God. “My Father and your Father …
my God and your God”, John 20: 17. We are brought to God, and to joy in Him.
The heart within us leapeth,
And cannot down be cast,
Since with our God it keepeth
Its never ending feast.
The new day, the feasting day has begun, SofS 2: 4. May we know it better, and enjoy it more, so that, going out in the joy of it, we may be able to minister from it in the midst of this wretched scene here below.
From A Voice to the Faithful—vol 24, 1890
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A FEW NOTES ON THE LORD’S SUPPER
SAINTS IN THE LIGHT OF
THE “NEW COVENANT”
I think it important to note that each of the three evangelists who give to us the details of the institution of the Lord’s supper places the company gathered at it as before God on the moral ground and good of the “new covenant”. They were gathered out of Israel, when the nation was rejecting Christ. But the apostle Paul, the great apostle of the Gentiles, places Gentile believers on the same ground, when speaking to the Gentile company gathered at Corinth, also to eat the Lord’s supper, see 1 Cor 11. Being on the earth, but only “until he come”, we are ever as a company (both Jews and Gentiles) in all the moral good before God of “the new covenant”.
What is that moral good? This is the point I have before me to reach in these notes. We read that God speaks of entering into covenant relations with man on the earth on two distinct occasions, see Heb 8. The first was with Israel, as the second also is to be. But at the Lord’s supper we have a company already on the earth, in the declared present good of what will be very soon displayed to Israel as the chosen nation, and to the Gentiles, blessed with Israel on the earth. In the first covenant it was what man could be for God, in the new covenant it is what God can be for man.
Before I dwell a little on that which I think scripture unfolds as to what that good is, I would ask you to refer to those passages which speak of the institution of the Lord’s supper, and its connection with the new covenant with reference to both Jews and Gentiles, to make clear that we are in the light of the new covenant at the Supper. I first turn to Matthew’s gospel. We read these words: “For this is my blood, that of the new covenant, that shed for many for remission of sins”, chap 26: 28 NT. We have, I think, two points established here. One is, that there is a new 318
company, distinct from the nation which had rejected Christ. The other is, that that company had a former responsible history of “sins” which are now remitted. I should think this is clear to any one. The blood is about to be shed, and the company gathered there is in all the good of it! Now we will refer to Mark’s testimony. He was not (as Matthew was) present at the supper, nor, I suppose, was Luke. Still their testimony is that of the Holy Ghost as to it.
We find that Mark repeats the language of Matthew. “This is my blood, that of the new covenant, that shed for many”, chap 14: 24 NT. As to Luke, we have, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you”, chap 22: 20 NT. Thus the Lord’s language, in each case, connects the Supper with the new covenant. Luke moreover adds what we do not find either in Matthew or Mark: “This do in remembrance of me”, v 19. I think this provides the Supper as the continuous outlet for the expression of our affection. These words (as to remembrance) are also found again in what the apostle has to say about the supper when he is addressing the Gentiles: “This do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me”, 1 Cor 11: 25. Almost a repetition of Luke’s words, to which (to secure I think its perpetuity to the end) the apostle adds the three significant words—“till he come”, v 26.
In all these passages, to me the fact that saints are, at the Supper, before God on the ground of blood-shedding, refers to a former responsible history, which nothing but blood could meet, and which it has met, fully and for ever for God and for those whom I shall now call the “new covenant” company!
John in his gospel does not give to us the institution of the Lord’s supper, nor the position and privileges of the saints at the Lord’s supper. He passes on from the supper (referred to, evidently, in chap 13: 1, 2) to our associations and relations with Christ, as gone out of the world to the Father! I think that the words, “part with me” indicate this.
For He had had part with them on the earth, henceforth He was not on earth, and they were to have part with Him in 319
His own new circle and sphere. The difference is, between their things and His things. This instruction (and how they obtained their fitness for it) comes before us in the chaps 14, 15, 16, 17 and 20. The Holy Spirit, “another Comforter”
(chap 14: 16), who abides for ever, dwelling with them and in them, is their capacity to enter into and share in His things, that is, in heavenly things; and He is also the Communicator of them. “He shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you”, chap16: 14.
Now I would consider for a moment a difficulty which presents itself to some in looking at the Lord’s supper in connection with the “new covenant” (which, however, is the aspect under which the scriptures we have referred to all regard it). It is said that the saints now are not the earthly company nor for earth. They are the heavenly company and for heaven, though for the moment they are on earth. The assembly, the church, is the “new creation” company.
All this is freely conceded, but the point before me, as I said, is, how is the company regarded at the Lord’s supper? I think all will admit that the prominent thought at the Supper is the Lord and His love expressed in His death. I do not think that the idea of blood-shedding comes in in the thought of new creation. I do not remember any scripture which presents new creation in connection with the shedding of the blood of Christ, but there are many which present the blood in connection with the “new covenant”, and this is what we find at the Lord’s supper. A new creation is not on the line of previous history exactly; but the shedding of blood clearly is, and indicates to me the blotting out of a previous history.
It is important, I think, to see the ground that we are set upon at the Lord’s supper. It explains to me the language that is often heard there, the relief, and joy, and praise, of this ‘new covenant company’, which is in all the present moral good of what God can be and is toward us—
His “new covenant”, and I would speak now for a moment of what that good is.
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In Hebrews 8 one prominent thought is, that all that are in the good of the “new covenant” “know the Lord”, and that their “hearts” and “minds” are affected by that knowledge! The second thought is, that righteousness is ministered, because sins and iniquities are “remembered no more”, see also 2 Cor 3. And a third is, that there is the active ministry of the Spirit, the Spirit being given so that the soul is led into all the good of the knowledge of the divine ground on which it is set, as of this new company! The making of a “new covenant” has in view a people on the earth, and Israel being as a nation rejected, if God has now a people on the earth, we (that is, all saints who ought to know that they are spiritually the new covenant company) are that people. For the future people see Heb 8: 6-13, but for the present people you must come to the present spiritual application of the new covenant, and you will only find those in the light of it at the Lord’s supper, and they are there knowing the terms on which they are there—the terms of the new covenant. God owns no other company on earth.
I do not see that the Lord’s supper is a “new creation”
act, nor part of the “worship” of the assembly. Both new creation and worship, so far as I see, can only be known as consistently following on from those who are in the good of the “new covenant”. Both are further unfoldings of God to the soul. In the supper the Lord is present, and He presents Himself afresh to us week by week in the bread and the wine. They sung a hymn, which I think, however little then they may have entered into it (for the Holy Ghost was not yet), must have savoured of the blessings of the new covenant.
But when I come to worship, and the assembly as a
new creation in the company of Christ, we are not on but beyond new covenant ground. All, I think, then is on another platform. Not new covenant, but new creation.
Here, as I understand it, all that is material has disappeared for faith. The Lord’s supper evidently has to do with material things—with time and place, bread and wine, and 321
persons; while worship is “in spirit and in truth” (John 4: 24) and material things have no place. In the assembly and the company of Christ we enter a region wherein we can say with truth, “all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ’’, 2 Cor 5: 18. (For note that the ministry of reconciliation should be distinguished from the ministry of the “new covenant”.) Here the worship of heaven, I think, is known. We are led by Him, who is the Sanctifier. He is in the company of the sanctified. We have come to the holiest. We have come to Him who is the Firstborn among the many brethren of whom He is not ashamed; and (as typified in the tabernacle) we are in the holiest where we see nothing save what speaks to us of Him, who praises the Father. Here He is the Minister of the sanctuary and the alone Actor and Leader, though it be made known now by means of the saints, and if HE leads, the theme must be from Him and of THE FATHER, Heb 2.
The Father’s praise is heard in the assembled company, I judge, as from Christ Himself in the midst of His brethren.
It is this which, as I understand it, forms the worship of the assembly, and is that of which the Lord speaks in John 4, Heb 2, &c. We come to the Lord’s supper “to break bread”, and are from that point led on to the worship of God as Father—a new creation in the company of Christ.
We must remember that there is an intimate
connection between the Lord’s supper and the worship of the assembly, though the one is new covenant blessing, and the other new creation. We advance from the one to the other. My individual history (with God) began when I heard with the ear of faith the gospel. Then as I advanced along the line with Him, I came into relation with what I have spoken of as the “new covenant” company, and found my associations with them at the Lord’s supper, in all the present moral good of the new covenant before God. Up to this point blessing was prominent, but He sets Himself before us then as the Blesser, and thenceforward the soul has to do with the Blesser more than with the blessing. “He shewed unto them His hands and His side”, John 20: 20.
He leads into present association with Himself as out of the 322
judgment and in all the blessed and eternal favour of God.
But there is no private road to reach it. I think you must go along the King’s highway, and learn the value of the truth of the new covenant first. In order to this, people have to give up isolation and individuality, and learn the blessings of the new covenant company. That is, they have to come to the LORD’S SUPPER. Many are free to admit that we should know more of the worship of the assembly wHere the Lord’s supper and the terms of the new covenant ARE better known and enjoyed. We are not on terms with God if the blessings of the new covenant are unknown, and if not, what room is there for worship? In some cases the Lord’s supper is sadly postponed, in others, placed as the last thing in the meeting!
The Lord’s supper, as I understand it, is the coming together of persons on the earth who are consciously before God in the good of the shedding of the blood of Christ. They are always in the good of it if once in the good of it, and hence the privilege thus to come is always theirs—“As oft as ye drink it”. They come together, locally, but they may be on board ship or where the responsibilities of taking up all the functions which belong to a local assembly (such as receiving to or putting away from the company) are not assumed, yet they may break bread together on the simple ground that they are before God in all the good of the remission of sins and they know it by the Spirit, for I take it that these are both connected by God with the Lord’s supper.
They are on the three new terms which I have named.
They know God, sins and sin are ended, righteousness is imputed, and they know it all by the Spirit. I think the “new covenant” is beautifully referred to in Daniel 9 and shews this. “To finish transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness”!
The act of breaking bread in all the conscious good of the blessings of the new covenant is not the supreme blessing of saints. The worship of the assembly as a new 323
creation and in the company of Christ alone is our supreme blessing. But we must be in the good of “new covenant”
blessing and privilege before we can touch this question of worship. The ministry of the “new covenant” must precede the “ministry of reconciliation”. The one is the Lord’s supper, the other is the sanctuary, the one more what I am freed from, and the other more what I am brought to.
I could not say that we come to the Lord’s supper as a “new creation” company and as the assembly, Heb 2. As such we had no previous sinful history. Nor does scripture present it so, I think. We ought to distinguish between the
“new covenant” ministry (which scripture does connect with the Lord’s supper) and the “ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5: 18) which certainly is new creation, and wherein we are in the good of the assembly’s highest blessing. As to their difference, the apostle speaks of the one in 2 Cor 3: 6 as the ministry of “righteousness” (v 8) and of the “spirit” (v 9) to those who formerly had neither the one nor the other; but he speaks of the “ministry of reconciliation” in chap 5: 16-21
as involving “new creation”. “So if any one be in Christ, there is a new creation; the old things have passed away, behold all things have become new: and all things are of God who has reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and given to us the ministry of that reconciliation”, 2 Cor 5: 17, 18 NT.
The Lord would have us in the conscious liberty of joy as a new covenant company. Its terms, on which we are with Him, if known, must produce this. But if this is confounded with our place and privileges in the new creation, bondage when we come together may result, because what is suited to the one may be unsuited to the other. We need spiritual discernment as to both. If, as I believe, we are found at the Lord’s supper in all the blessed liberty of Christ’s presence with His own as the new covenant company, we pass from the realization of that, into the good of His presence with us as the new creation company, the assembly of Hebrews 2, but I would not confound them. To do this is not well and puts the saints 324
into bondage (when they should be in the most blessed sense of liberty and joy).
The saints are led, when things are in their normal
condition, from the Lord’s supper into their present association with Christ in the assembly and into all the blessedness of worship. The Lord’s supper, therefore, as I understand it, and the knowledge of the blessings of the
“new covenant”, are thus, so to speak, preliminary, but necessary to the entrance of the soul into all the full good of being with the Lord in the company of His own as a new creation—the full blessing which we shall know in heaven.
May the Lord give to each of us to seek to know and
to enjoy both the blessings of the “new covenant”, and the worship of the assembly
From Food for the Faithful—vol 3, 1890
325
“PURGE OUT THEREFORE THE OLD LEAVEN”
AND
“IF A MAN THEREFORE PURGE HIMSELF”
We see in scripture that when the church was first set on the earth to be for God, responsibility was attached to it. Leaven, whether moral, as in Corinthians, or doctrinal, as in Galatians, was to be purged out. When, as time wore on, the whole professing body had become corrupt, so that leaven permeated the whole professing system, as in 2 Timothy 2, then the faithful man was directed to purge himself, for God can have no tolerance of evil, nor go on with those who do not refuse it.
When Israel had wholly broken down as a nation, God in His grace preserved a feeble remnant. He brought them into communion with Himself, which the nation as a whole (through sin) had forfeited. But this remnant was called upon to act on original truth—truth committed once to the nation as a whole. In Malachi we read, “Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts”, chap 3: 7.
That is, they are called upon to act on original truth. “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it”, v 10. God has for them and for us only purposes of blessing, but the return to original truth are the terms of it.
Now as Israel failed, so has the professing church failed. In the history of the church of God in our own day, there is a little remnant (Luke 12: 32; 2 Tim 2: 22) whose eyes God has opened as to truth for the last fifty years.
These are responsible to act on the original truth, once committed to the church as a whole. Original truth, when 326
evil was there, and before the whole became corrupt, was,
“purge out the old leaven”, 1 Cor 5: 7. This then is our first responsibility to the Lord, and to those gathered on divine principles today. Indeed, it is this first principle on which we have all along acted. This principle, and the ability to act on it as taught in 1 Cor 5, has never been called into question wherever there are two or three gathered to His name until now. You cannot, I think, treat this little remnant (thus acting for God and for the whole company everywhere, in putting out leaven) as the corrupt mass of 2
Tim 2, from whom a man of God is then taught to purge
“himself”. Instead of acting in humility on original truth respecting evil (where it exists) we are told by many that they have acted on 2 Tim 2. They have not persistently sought to “purge out”, for the blessing of all, but they have purged themselves, and Rom 16: 17, is misquoted as authority, an all important scripture in its place.
Now it is important to see this—that the word “purge”
( έκκαθυίρω), only occurs twice in the New Testament text, and that we have in its use, in both cases, the direction of our God when evil was there, 1 Cor 5; and 2 Tim 2. First, when the church was in the apostolic days of 1 Corinthians, and the days of 2 Timothy (distinctly called the “last days”) had not fully come (for he does not bid them purge themselves from Corinth); and secondly, when those evil days HAD come. For well-nigh fifty years saints called out have acted among each other in the various gatherings separated to the Lord on the truth set forth for them in these two passages. According to the instruction given, 1
Corinthians 5 has been acted on in our assemblies, however feebly, and we have acted with the corrupt professing body (where the truth is given up) on the direction given us as to it, in 2 Timothy 2: 21. Have we been acting for fifty years wrongly? Clearly we have, if it is right to treat those who have received the truth from God as you treat the corrupt professing church. Some have done this in going out, and, as they say, are purging themselves from those to whom, by the word of God, He committed afresh, fifty years ago, truth originally taught and known to all the saints.
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May not those once called out again become
leavened? Certainly they may. But while leaven, of all kinds, clearly manifested, is, in our little assemblies, sought to be “put out”, you have the proof that there is One who cares, and an “among yourselves”,—a “within” (1 Cor 5: 9, 10, which God is still owning, and wherein by His Spirit He is still working to keep clean. I press, that it must be manifested and not merely suspected. While there are those of whom it can be said, “Go through the midst of the city …
and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh, and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof” (Ezek 9: 4); you have the proof that these are not leavened; and 2 Tim 2: 21, is misquoted as a sanction to purge yourself from such. God spares, and encourages, and makes a difference. God is “a God of judgment, and by him actions are weighed”, 1 Sam 2: 3.
This confounding of the word “purge”, this
misapplying of scripture (all in beautiful order in its proper connection), is not helpful, but sad. We must not be of those “who call evil good, and good evil, that put darkness for light, and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter”, Isa 5: 20. As in Corinth, so now, divisions would never have occurred if the leaders and the led had accepted God’s word as to what to purge and when to purge, and it is a mark of the true remnant that they do cleave to the Word—their only claim to His blessing, Rev 3: 8. The Lord keep us going steadily on, and using the ability to “purge" which He has given, in its own simple and proper meaning and connection.
(NB: there is a sequel to this article on page 343)
From A Voice to the Faithful—vol 24, 1890
328
“A GOLDEN BELL AND A POMEGRANATE”
“A golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate, upon the hem of the robe round about”
We should know something of priestly service as Christians (1 Pet 2: 5; Rev 1: 6), and therefore something of priestly attire. Our great High Priest, ever perfect, is now in the presence of God for us, and the sound of the golden bell is heard; for the Holy Ghost has come out consequent on Christ’s going in. But there is in Him perfect communion, moreover, in all His service with God’s present thoughts of and for His people; this is the pomegranate.
The pomegranate was the fruit of the land, see Deut
8: 8. Around “the ephod all of blue” (the heavenly colour) and upon the hem of it were these golden bells and pomegranates alternately. The measure of my testimony as a Christian (the sound) is equal to the fruit which I am feeding upon; it is equal to my communion. Never more, never less. Only as I feed upon Christ will Christ be heard, and the sound come from me; only thus can I fulfil my priestly service. I go in to minister.
This robe (and its accompaniments, the bells and pomegranates) was appointed to be worn when the high priest went into the holiest. But there the priests now have always access, Heb 10. It is their place, and this dress was the suited attire for the place. Every movement of the one thus arrayed would tell, as heard without, that, he was in the holiest. It is not, I think, for us to consider ourselves fittingly clad if otherwise attired; for then either some other sound, or no sound at all, is heard from me. What was heard without, coming from the priest, was not separated from the fruit of the land, which in all varied colours also formed part of his dress; and my testimony is irrevocably linked with it. If I give out in the assembly something which is not God’s present sound for His people, though it may be the truth, I am separating the golden bell and the 329
pomegranate. It is not what measure of communion I enjoyed in the past that my testimony in the present is based upon. This would also be separating the golden bell and the pomegranate. No, it is the fruit of the land in present enjoyment; to this alone is the golden bell united.
“As I hear, I judge” (John 5: 30) gives it us from the lips of the Lord Himself. It is as I hear from communion, it is as I feed upon the heavenly, that heavenly sounds will be heard from me.
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 18, 1891
330
“I AM THE ROOT AND THE OFFSPRING OF
DAVID
AND
THE BRIGHT AND MORNING STAR”
The Morning Star is shining bright, though clouds my sky may fill.
Its gleams I catch, a pilgrim here, at peace with God and still.
And soon I know the day must break, yon Star its Herald there Tells of the end of earth’s long night and each deceiving snare.
Thou Morning Star! Herald of Day! Lord Jesus, can it be That aught of night can chain the soul that’s caught one glimpse of Thee?
This night aye filled with groans and woe, with agony and pain, Whose darkest hour records one fact—“The Lord of Life was slain”?
Thou Morning Star! Lord, fix my gaze, nor ever let me be By glittering toys of earth entranced, forgetful, Lord, of Thee.
Amid earth’s roar I hear Thy voice, “The night is round thee now,
But my day of glory soon shall light thy worn and weary brow”.
The Morning Star! I have its cheer, yet clearer may it shine—
A light to guide me all the way, lit up by love divine.
I lie within Thy bosom, Lord, the one Thy love has blessed; Darkness may thicken, light is mine to Thine own eternal rest.
“And the Spirit and the bride say, COME”—Rev 22: 17
1868
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 18, 1891
331
“Whose son art thou, thou young man?”
What family a man derives from shows his present interests and his future prospects.
1. I find myself within a vast circle, a system built up under Satan, its accepted prince and ruler. I am surrounded by men and women, called by the Spirit of God in His word, “the children of this world”. Faith in Christ says, ‘ You do not belong to them’.
2. Do I dare to take a step in opposition to this immense vortex which is surging all around me? It must be in open opposition then to him who energises and moves it all. Can I, dare I, expose myself to his wrath? Faith in me says, ‘ I can, I will leave this place’.
3. Dare I to take a yet further step, and openly to ally myself with those who say they have no interests here, but have died, and who thus proclaim every link snapped, and that they live in and for another? Faith in me says I can say this, “I am crucified with Christ, yet I live”, Gal 2: 20. “The world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Gal 6: 14), and I am in Christ.
There are those three steps in the pathway of faith, and they may be easily discerned in the lives of those whom the Lord is leading on today, as they could in past ages, I think, always be discerned. It may be helpful to ask ourselves if we have taken all those. They are illustrated for us in the three actions of Moses. (These are found in Heb 11: 24, 27, 28.)
First Moses says, ‘I did not derive from this family.
My origin is not from it. I find myself, it is true, in Pharaoh’s house. I refuse to own that I am of this family’. The child is beginning to walk alone. The soul is waking up to its privileges and its responsibilities. This is of immense and precious moment in its history. I see that I am born of God, 332
compare John 1: 12 with 1 John 3: 1, 2. And when the soul has reached this point, we have the act of faith. “By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter”, Heb 11: 24.
The second step is, “By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king”, v 27. I give up the whole place, and because I enjoy another, I turn my back on it all.
This is the next act of faith. In the midst of the world ruled by Satan I proclaim that I have done with it. ‘Then you will have to meet the wrath of the king’. Be it so. I see a greater than he, a greater than Pharaoh. He “endured”, as seeing
“Him who is invisible” to mortal eye, v 27.
The third step is, I am linked with Christ on the ground of His death. In the midst of a hostile territory, swayed by an adverse power, I rest in peace. They fed on the slain lamb. “Through faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of blood, lest he that destroyed the firstborn should touch them”, v 28. I am sheltered by the blood, I am feeding on the Lamb, and the Lord in unsparing judgment is going forth upon all outside.
There is order in all this. First: I see my origin—“born
… of God”, John 1: 13. Second: I see that I have done with this place. Third: I see that I am under God’s shelter, and given His food—His Lamb, with the “unleavened bread of sincerity and truth”, 1 Cor 5: 8. ‘Egypt’s food no more to eat’. I am in the Lord’s company. Mine is a wondrous deliverance. Salvation is of the Lord, and I am gone in the death of another, even Christ.
One word more. There is a “for” connected with these three steps of faith. As to the first, it might have been thought a great honour that providence had placed him in the house of Pharaoh. The soul looked higher than this, high as it was. “FOR he had respect unto the recompense of the reward”, Heb 11: 26. Faith looks forward. As to the second step, he might have connected himself with God’s people and stayed in Egypt. He did not, he forsook the land, it had no attraction for him. He did not look at the wrath of 333
the king, he looked higher than that; “FOR he endured as seeing Him who is invisible”, v 27. And as to the third step, the enemy is only powerless when he has to do with a dead man. “Through faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of blood, LEST [for fear that] he that destroyed the firstborn should touch them”. This closes Moses’ acts of faith, as given to us here. I am only safe from the enemy while on the ground of life by the death of Christ, in which I met my end in judgment. He cannot touch me. “He that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not”. Here is our end, our origin, and also our protection, but I think only here.
Saul’s challenge we shall all assuredly hear. I hear it all around me. It is the voice of the man who is here—the natural man—challenging the spiritual man. In Christ we have triumphed over all the power of the enemy. “I will sing unto the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously”, Exod 15: 1. The enemy is overthrown. I see David with the head of Goliath in his hand. It is all done; but remember you will have to be challenged, nay, you are continually challenged, and it is good for you to challenge yourself as to what family you belong to. May the reader be enabled by grace daily to give the reply that Moses gave—he “kept the passover” this one reply—and the Holy Ghost gives us these his three actions, all based upon a living faith in the living God.
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 18, 1891
334
THE PROVISION FOR THIS, ANOTHER DAY
IN THE WILDERNESS
The blessed Lord was ever God’s delight, perfect in all His ways as Man down here. The manna, “the bread that came down from heaven”, always doing the business of the Father—ever pleasing God and doing His will—such was His path in the midst of all that characterises man naturally; namely, the pleasing of ourselves.
And we Christians have to “gather up” the manna.
God has given it to us as our supply for the wilderness—
Himself in His perfect path and service. God has given us that blessed, humbled One as Man down here. There is Christ for us all. Every morning there the manna lay in the wilderness, round about the camp of God’s people, “a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost on the ground”, Exod 16: 14. It is not doctrine, but Christ; a plentiful supply for all, and for strength in wilderness need. It might be trampled upon, but they had to gather it up; and so have we, and this needs diligence and earnestness, and a refusal of myself, and my things, Phil 2: 21.
Do you want God to see in your life and actions anything different from what He saw in Christ? ‘Ah! no’, you say; ‘but I have the flesh in me, and He had not’. And it is just because you are not perfect that God has given you Christ, the perfect One, for every detail of your path. You must gather up the manna, “every man according to his eating”. You and I want Christ for every occasion, because the flesh (Gal 2: 17) is always desirous to obtrude itself. The flesh does not assert itself in us all in a similar way, or come out with the same provocation. No, every Christian requires the manna, and must gather it up “according to his eating”.
Christ “gathered” meets the need of every occasion.
That blessed walk of thirty-three years on this earth for God! Did not God delight in it? He did, He does still; for the pot of manna was laid up “before the Lord, to be kept”.
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God will never forget it. Do I want to please God? I must keep it ever before me. I must gather it up daily, and I must feed upon it whenever I hunger (the hunger is the need of the wilderness).
Would not God have Christ, in all His separation from the course of this world, in all that lonely path of obedience and REST, reproduced in every one of us? Is not a Christian GOD’s workmanship, an “epistle of Christ”, “known and read of all men”, 2 Cor 3: 2, 3? How much of this very day have I been occupied in gathering up my soul’s food—in gathering up the manna? ‘Oh for more knowledge myself of what the manna is!’ Surely every believer will say ‘Amen’ to this—more gathering of it—more feeding upon it. After another night’s sleep in the wilderness what was the first thing that greeted an Israelite going out of his tent door? It was God’s provision for him for that day. Christ for me for this day, and Christ for God. Nothing else fully satisfies Him.
Nothing but Christ, as on we tread.
“I am among you as he that serveth”, Luke 22: 27. “I receive not honour from men”. True honour comes from God only, John 5: 41, 44. If I know something of gathering up the manna, Christ’s friends (mark it well) will be my friends. His path will be mine, His joy mine, His interests mine. The meekness and gentleness of Christ I shall know, if only a little, a something about it. And the world—this poor world, with all its pomp, and pride, and empty VANITY—
will be to me “vanity of vanities; all is vanity”, Eccles 1: 2,
&c.. He is real and she is real, amidst all its unreality, whose eye is on CHRIST, and who is seeking, through grace (for all is of grace) to walk here daily “as He walked”.
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 18, 1891
336
“Manoah and his wife LOOKED ON”
Christ is the grand subject of the Bible. He is the object of God, in type and shadow, in the Old Testament, but in real substance in the New. Hence, when on earth, He said, “Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of ME”, John 5: 39. There is blessed food for the soul in reading the Old Testament in this light. Christ is the key which unlocks the treasure to us.
The burnt-offering—Christ in all His blessed
perfection—wholly burnt—a sweet savour to God (Lev 1)—is before us in this offering of Manoah and his wife. The burnt-offering was all for God, none of it could be eaten by man; but along with it we find God provided a meat-offering (vv 19, 23), and of this the priest might eat.
Christ, as the food of God, is presented to us in the burnt-offering. What did Manoah and his wife see? They saw it was all for God. God has found infinite satisfaction and delight in the work of the cross. It all went up a savour of infinite sweetness to God. But God has called us in to share in our measure in this His own delight in Christ and His work. There is a meat-offering. He has given to the believer that same blessed Christ to be the continual food of his soul. Christ is the fatted calf of Luke 15. God says,
“Bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry”. Who are the “us” here invited to “eat, and be merry”? It is the Father and the returned prodigal son. God says, ‘I have found my delight in Him, and now do you come and find your delight in Him too’. Thus by His own request I feed upon what the Father feeds upon.
Do not be for ever occupied with, and complaining of, your leanness; we must all admit it, and then it is time to have done with it. Can you fathom what that blessed Christ is to God—the burnt-offering? No, you cannot; but you can 337
do what Manoah and his wife did. You can “look on” and see what God’s estimate is. We want more of this habit.
We want daily to say, ‘Well I know what Christ was to God in all the work of the cross’; and as I look on and am occupied with that, I am feeding upon what delights the heart of the blessed God Himself. And note it is God’s WISH
for me to be thus occupied. It will be the theme of eternal occupation in heaven, and if so it is fitting that it should be my theme on earth. Thus we feed upon that which has eternally satisfied God.
The fire is judgment. But what need of the judgment of God upon Him? Though Christ in all His absolute perfection is seen in the burnt-offering, the fire proclaims that He took the place of judgment. The sin and the sinner needed this, and the holiness of God demanded it. But then God has accepted that work. Yes, He finds His delight in it.
It is done; and as we contemplate it we partake with God.
We ‘look on’ upon that wondrous scene, always fresh to God, and we see Christ, and the work He accomplished, all going up and accepted by Him. We are called in to share with God in all the blessing of it, to feed, and if I am not there I am not in communion with God’s thoughts of His blessed Son.
God, thine everlasting portion,
Feeds thee with the mighty’s meat;
Price of Egypt’s hard extortion,
Egypt’s food no more to eat.
God delights to draw our attention to His own delight in Christ. May our hearts find their true rest there. It is not what I am or can be, it is what Christ was and is. May it be now the food of our souls, as it will be throughout eternity.
From The Christian’s Friend—vol 18, 1891
338
OR
‘THE GOD OF MAN’ WHICH?
What makes the vision of the apocalyptic future so blessed is, that God and man are to spend eternity together.
No words of the banished seer, writing his “book” in the lonely isle of Patmos, are more sweet to the Christian ear than these, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God”, Rev 21: 3. How the heart delights to dwell in the midst of this scene of tears and death, and sorrow and pain, on the consequences of God thus dwelling. What are they? “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away”, v 4.
But how inclined are we to exclaim, like Nicodemus
of old, “How can these things be?”, John 3: 9. And our comfort shall be that He who answered him has also answered it in His word.
If God and man are to be thus together, something must be done. All will admit this. But who is to be the doer, for this makes the difference between the “man of God” and the ‘God of man’. In the first, the work of the cross is the foundation. The blessed God is the workman. He has set His hand (in spite of all that the devil has done), to make man all that He would have him to be for His own glory. In the second, man is the workman. Conscious of unlikeness in every detail to God, man is seen busily engaged in forming a God for himself—a God according to his own notions and imaginations, or passions and refinements, as the case may be. For there is one great, grand problem, which conscience has raised, and continually stirs in the human breast, and we see it everywhere: it is, ‘How are a Supreme Being and man to be brought together?’
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The need of this is confessed everywhere, for I do not count an atheist worthy of consideration. If I go to the dark, uncultivated African, to the Chinaman, to the North and South American Indian, or to the South Sea Islander, the idea of the existence of a Supreme Being is everywhere. I turn to the refinement and intellect of civilised Europe, and it is the same. Wherever man is found it is seen that he is alike in this matter. But what is he doing? He is framing doctrines and accommodating God to himself, which God is not the God of the Bible. The ‘God of man’ is not the God who has been revealed there and declared on earth. “The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him”, John 1: 18.
We must write “Babel” across all these doctrines of men, for there is a confusion of tongues. What God is, in the view of an Englishman trying without divine light to find out, is different from what God is to an equally earnest and devoted African, and the multitude of opinions widens and extends into a number as great as that of the whole thus occupied human family, taken singly.
We turn away from the sad picture. Relief for the burdened and distressed heart cannot be found there.
Let us consider
1. “THE MAN OF GOD”
We may read this expression in forty-five different places in scripture, but it is the New Testament use of it which presents it to us in its perfection, and to which I draw attention here. The shadows of the past have given place to the reality and substance of the present; the “first man” has been displaced by “the second Man”; the “old” by the “new”.
I refer to 1 Tim 4: 11 and 2 Tim 3: 17. In the first Timothy is addressed by the apostle as a “man of God”, in the second he is told of the sufficiency of scripture, in order to the perfection of the same one thus addressed.
The words then, “the man of God”, convey that God,
not man, is the active agent. God will have man for His own 340
glory. Think of this—one in whom God can boast. If so, surely God must do all the work from beginning to end. And so it is. When God formed this present natural creation, placing at its finish man at the head of it all, there was no defect. God pronounced this His own work to be “very good”. And now, when God works again that which issues from His hand is perfect, spite of the effort of Satan again to mar it, for we see what Timothy is to be in Satan’s world as subject to scripture, and as a vessel for the display of God on earth. He is to manifest God because he was a “man of God”. “Be ye therefore imitators of God as beloved children”, Eph 5: 1 NT. Not only is there the work of the cross, without which there can be nothing, but the Holy Ghost has come down and dwells in the believer, forming him by the word. Such was Timothy: God’s work from beginning to end. Such a soul is not trying to make himself somewhat better, and that more suitable; he is under the control of the word, and learning by the Spirit of God, who only can unfold it, what he is, as a “new creation” in Christ Jesus. The man of God is the living expression of the mind of God on earth. What a great and mighty truth! He ‘walks with God’ as Enoch and Noah did. He walks “by faith, not by sight”, 2 Cor 5: 7.
If this is not the case, then is not the other side true of me? I am following a God of my own creation, with whom I must one day dwell for eternity.
2. ‘THE GOD OF MAN’
It takes such various forms that we cannot fully dwell on such a topic as this. We know what we followed in the day of our own darkness. “Divers lust and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another”, Titus 3: 3. What is the God of man? The answer is himself—self in one form or another, though the forms may be as various as the grains of sand on the seashore. But if so he is without God. Yes, it is so. Intellect, morality, pleasure, philosophy, science—all lend their aid to further the delusion, while on the side of religion we are told of a God whose “love” is said 341
to shut out His “righteousness” and His “holiness”. Can God have made beings to destroy them? the unbeliever boastingly inquires. God is not known. All is dark and confused, while man, shrouding himself in the darkness which his own mind has created, piously erects his altar to the “unknown God”, and thus Athens confesses openly that
‘the wisest cannot know in this world’. And the same altar stands in the Athens of this day. And if not the wisest, then who?
We know the answer. “The babes”, not the wise and
prudent, Matt 11: 25. But some one may possibly be reading these lines who is not a “man of God”. I pray you, if such be your case, to reflect on what you are doing, and on what God can do in your case. You want light, and scripture gives it, not your own dark mind. Your case is not hopeless. But do not seek to hide from yourself that you are not at rest. You can never rest until you see that God is satisfied, and about you. When you know this you will seek to understand the ground of it, and this desire will send you to scripture as it sent Timothy.
You are working to make God suit you if you do not see that God has made you in Christ all that suits Him, and you will never succeed so as to quiet your conscience.
Of some we read “whose God is their belly”, Phil 3: 19. Of others we read, “this is the true God, and eternal life” (1 John 5: 20), and to such the word is yet applicable—
“Little children, keep yourselves from idols”, v 21.
Reader, be honest! Which describes your case, “the man of God” or ‘the God of man’?
From Helps in Things Concerning Himself—vol 1, 1891
342
LEAVEN”,
AND
“IF A MAN THEREFORE PURGE HIMSELF”
We have pointed out in a previous paper [see page 326] that all evil, called in scripture “leaven”, must be refused by a Christian. We will look now at the method in which it is to be dealt with, as therein unfolded.
First as to ourselves individually. Since we still have besides the new the “old” nature, there can be no communion with God without there is self-judgment. At Corinth this was lacking, and we read because of this God came in in judgment. “For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged”, 1 Cor 11: 31. The flesh (that which encourages in us natural desires) must be condemned because God has condemned it. “In the likeness of sinful flesh (Christ), and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”, Rom 8: 3. That which springs from the natural heart can only be evil. Unjudged it will work in me, and from me out to all around, thus, as leaven, contaminating all with whom I have fellowship.
When the Lord enables the believer (by His Spirit) continuously to write death upon himself, the working of leaven is stopped in him. He does not contaminate others.
“There is no occasion of stumbling in him”, 1 John 2: 10. It is thus that one is kept in the enjoyment also of our only true place and portion in Christ. The ceaseless activity of Christ on high, first as our Intercessor, and, if we sin, as our Advocate, is made good to us by the Spirit who dwells in us. The Spirit is able then to minister unto and to lead us on, “For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God” (1 Cor 2: 10), and He is not then occupied (as is otherwise the case) with leading us to judge ourselves.
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If there is not self-judgment, the working of “leaven”
will shew itself to others. The “spiritual” Christian will refuse it, the “carnal” man will not (probably). “He that is spiritual judgeth all things”, 1 Cor 2: 15. He will seek, as Paul did, to exercise him or those, whose carnal walk has caused them to allow “leaven”, and even to associate themselves with the leavened, without any exercise of conscience before God as to His mind in such a case.
Yet God’s mind is to be known and is found in the word. Therein I am not anywhere directed to at once give up a case as hopeless, because I see leaven at work. If my brother’s feet are defiled, and God has drawn my attention to the fact, why has He done so save for me to take up in love to my brother a responsibility from which I cannot escape? (“If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them”). That responsibility is to remove the defilement, see John 13.
But if my every individual effort should fail, if the defilement still remains, and if effect follows cause, and others are defiled, I do not yet find scriptural warrant directing me then to give up the case as hopeless. No, there is yet another step, and it is a most solemn one. But it must be taken, before I can have His authority to leave, or His company with me in leaving, while to have both these must be the desire of every godly soul. I must bring the case before the assembly to which the offender is immediately responsible.
The principle contained in Matthew 18, though there
applied to an individual and personal trespass, is true also in the widest sense. Paul was bringing an offender in whom the leaven of immorality was working, before the Corinthian assembly in 1 Cor 5 and also in 1 Cor 15, he draws the assembly’s attention to the leaven of evil doctrine which was working there. In like manner the apostle brought the
“leaven” of evil doctrine before the assemblies of Galatia, in the whole of that epistle. In both cases he was telling “it to the assembly” (Matt 18: 17 NT) wherein the leaven was actually working.
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It was not (I judge) necessary for Paul to go to the offender, because the evil in which he was still persisting was a “commonly reported” and well-known fact. Nor is it, therefore, in a similar case necessary for us, but it is necessary to tell the matter out to the gathered saints, the assembly of God, because they are responsible to deal with the case, and to purge out leaven. Even an apostle would not act for them to relieve them of this responsibility, see 2
Cor 7: 11, 12.
We cannot ignore the assembly of God on the earth
without loss, though it may be only “two or three” gathered unto Christ’s name. There the Lord Himself is, to guide and support, to counsel and advise by His Spirit, according to His word, “there am I in the midst”, Matt 18: 20. It is constituted by Himself there present, the supreme and final court of appeal. It may be abused or unvalued, but there is no company on earth so great, and the whole of human intelligence, must pale before it. If the Queen of Sheba got the settlement of all her “hard questions” in the presence of Solomon (2 Chron 9: 1, 2), we have also our resource; we can say, ‘‘A greater than Solomon is here’’, Matt 12: 42!
Now when a company has lately gone out from the Lord’s presence (there am I in the midst) and from those gathered to Him, basing this action upon the existence of false doctrine (leaven) allowed by those from whom they have withdrawn, we must turn to Him, and to scripture.
Their claim to be ‘a new testimony’ in these last days, is the revival again of the claim of ‘Cluffism’. Every fresh revival, and every distinct remnant testimony, has always been supported by the word of God, and its originators have been marked and characterised by their subjection to it, see Rev 3: 8. Not so is it in the case which we have before us. The assembly of God on the earth, and what is greater, the presence of Christ in it, has been ignored, and God’s word testifying as to both, despised by the seceders. They have not in this case brought their charges (with adequate witnesses, and in the presence of accusers and accused) before the “assembly of God” on the earth, in any locality 345
whatever. “Them that honour me I will honour”, that is the word of God, “and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed”, 1 Sam 2: 30. How has Christ been “honoured”
though present in the midst? Yet the boast has been loud about refusing doctrines, &c, ‘dishonouring to Christ’, as though His “honour” were paramount and the way to maintain it could be known without seeking to know His mind! We point to the way in which the leaven of false doctrine was dealt with in the examples which we have cited to prove the un-scriptural character of the actions of leaders in the present division.
But it may be said that I am only dwelling upon the
manner the leaven has been dealt with, and I am not shewing that there was no leaven. My reader, this is strange reasoning indeed, but it has deceived very many, alas! in this conflict. I am not called upon to prove false that which is advanced by others. A plaintiff brings the gravest accusations into court. Is it the responsibility of the court and listeners to disprove his accusations, or is it his responsibility to prove them? Clearly the latter. It is false that a ‘ system’ exists (‘ doctrines longuement muries et aussi longuement combattues’28), though freely printed and circulated in England, France, Switzerland, and elsewhere, and this false accusation would have been exposed if brought into the light of Christ’s presence. We have had no end of such accusations, but not one proof in the presence of Christ in the midst of His assembly, where alone we should learn His judgment, when it is, as this has been, an assembly responsibility, and where the light would detect and expose all. It is unscriptural to settle things for the assembly away from Him, and so outside of our true place of strength, wisdom, and blessing. We must remember the word, “The assembly is subject unto Christ”, Eph 5: 24. The assembly is not subject to what is settled for it OUTSIDE THE
PRESENCE OF CHRIST.
28 ‘ doctrines matured over a long time, and also long contested’—AB
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A first wrong step taken and the second is more easy.
The word of God and its direction has been unheeded, and there is no knowing where souls may drift to, save the Lord come in in His power and arrest them. Thank God for all that we have seen of self-judgment and humiliation for our part in this sorrow. Yet as it was in the days of His flesh (John 8) so it has been now. The exercise has come from and in His presence, and not by going out of it. If we err, that is the place to learn His mind, and when the erring one is there in confession, His blessed words are “Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more”, John 8: 10. Is He changed or will He say less to every failing but truly humbled brother today?
It has been said that those gone out have done the
‘right thing’ even if in a wrong way. In answer, we observe that scripture has been given up by them, the presence and authority of Christ on earth in the assembly has been despised, the saints scattered, and in many cases driven out from the fear of association with “leaven”. Can these things be right? Is it the “right thing” to stigmatise as “iniquity”
and “vessels to dishonour” thousands of saints from whom those who thus speak have withdrawn—thousands who have never even heard what they are charged with, and have had no proof of it save the bare accusation? Alas! for those who call this “evil” division “good” and those who refuse it
“evil”, Isa 5: 20!
Blessed Lord! we own a ‘needs be’ for all thy late gracious dealings with us (1 Pet 1: 6), yet in thy presence will we, through grace, abide, until that day when we shall see and be with Thee for ever.
From A Voice to the Faithful—vol 25, 1891
347
THAT I MAY “SERVE” HIM, BE “DEVOTED”
TO HIM, AND BE “SEATED” WITH HIM IN
“COMMUNION”
To dwell in the peace and joy of present association with Christ, is our portion, while waiting for that day when we shall be like Him, “for we shall see him as he is”, 1 John 3: 2.
In order to this, the Lord brings me in spirit to where He is. I must also be with Christ as He is, the resurrection Man, the Conqueror out of death. I am with Him also in newness of life as to myself, my old status ended, and His life my life.
In the family at Bethany we have a little foreshadowing of what this is. In John 12 we have Lazarus in resurrection attire seated with Christ. “There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him. Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment”. We have three persons named here, three saints of God. Christ is the central object, and they are around and near to Him. But notice each is occupied, and Lazarus peculiarly so. He is seated with the Lord and feeding with Him, sharing and enjoying what the Lord Himself enjoys.
This occupies him. Mary is devoted to Him—she will give up her all for His gratification; she will fill the house with the odour of the ointment, but she is not sitting with Him. Martha also is occupied, but differently from either. “Martha served”. The order is great, greater, greatest. It is a great favour that I am permitted to serve Him, it is a greater favour that by the Spirit I am now devoted to Him, it is the greatest favour of all, one that an angel could not know (though an angel might know the first) that I am in resurrection with Him. The greatest includes the other two.
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It is a typical scene; one, thank God, which in its highest enjoyment would be and is known in reality on earth in the power of the Holy Ghost by those who see their place and portion in Christ. Lazarus, the resurrection man, is in the company of Him who has revealed Himself as the “resurrection and the life”, John 11: 25. That power has been put forth as to Lazarus, and its effect has been to seat him with the Lord. In perfect peace to partake of all that He Himself enjoys as the risen Man (Christ now) out of death. That is the place and the occupation of this day. But there is another day referred to here. “The next day”, v 12. That day is the day of the manifestation of the glory of the kingdom. The Lord comes into it, as predicted of Him, riding on an ass, and the Greeks come up to worship (v 20); but all this is based on the work of the cross. That future day is what we are waiting for—the day of the public display of the world’s rightful king. But the private blessedness of this day, this hour, shut in with Christ, and gathered around Himself to feed upon what delights Him, is the point before me now. “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things that are above”, Col 3: 1. As gathered to the Lord, there are: first, communion, second, devotedness, third, service.
Christians are all (as in Christ) a resurrection people.
They belong to that side where Christ is. And what is the world to such? It is what the grave was to Lazarus. The world to us is the grave of Lazarus. Had he done with it? Were there certain attractions yet lying in that grave for the resurrection man? No, he had lain there in death, but now in life, he had done with it, and we have done with the world. That is, I am in a new place and in a new condition in Christ’s company; second, He, Christ, has done with sin and death and every responsibility connected” with those who were lying under them. “Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more’ , Rom 6: 9. He is in a new condition, see Phil 3: 10; John 20: 27; 2
Cor 5: 16. Thirdly, I have life, and I am linked with Him on the ground of all this, in resurrection. I live therefore, and I feast with Him. If the grave is behind me, and the cross has ended for me all its claims; in resurrection I am out of it. Death comes before resurrection. If I knew more of death, what Christ’s death is as ending all, I should know more of what resurrection 349
is as introducing into all that is of Himself which He wishes me now to share. The gloom of the grave (this world) is in direct contrast to the light that shines now, “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”, 2 Cor 4: 6. If I am dwelling in His company I am not dwelling in the gloom, nor can I be content with a mixture (twilight).
I have nothing to do with the grave now, yet I think I must know death, and accept it, before I can know anything about resurrection.29 We read earlier that he who hears Him who is the resurrection and the life and believes, “is passed from death unto life”, John 5: 24. You cannot amalgamate the two, nor have the portion of life, that is Christ’s present interests and joys as yours, until you have accepted the other.
How completely this is so we may see in the Lord’s words as Lazarus came out of the grave. He will have no trace of the grave upon him. It is a thorough and a perfect change. Hence He says, “Loose him, and let him go”, John 11: 44. Every trace of death must be obliterated, and in Christ in resurrection we step forth into liberty. I am in a new day with Him.
I think we may find believers now in the different conditions of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, but the one that could sit and feed with Christ was the resurrection man. It is a step beyond death. I think Mary was occupied with Christ in death, Martha with a living Christ on earth, and Lazarus with Him in resurrection and awaiting His glory therefore. This last is the desire of His heart for me. “Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him”. May I now be with Him thus? Can
I by faith enjoy the new scene, and the new life now, and in my measure occupy myself with Christ’s present interests and prospects? To these questions I believe the Spirit of God answers, Yes, see 1 Cor 4: 9-10. But it is not service, blessed as it is to serve, nor even devotedness, acceptable as this is to Him, but it is present communion with Him, and a heart that says, ‘I am only enjoying now what He enjoys, only seeking now His pleasure’.
29 Faith is greater than sight. Faith is the present portion of a saint.
“We shall see”, this is future. Faith accepts the truth of “risen with Christ”, though seen things now contradict it.
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In order to this I must accept my death as to all this present scene. In the death of Christ every link was sundered with the world—the first man, and all that belongs to him, are like the antediluvian world, under judgment. With Christ I have come out of the grave, which ended it all for me, and I am free now on the other side. An immense expanse here lies spread out to the eye of faith, for it is all that is Christ’s as founded upon His death and resurrection, “What shall be done unto the man whom the king delighteth to honour?”, Est 6: 6. This is the question now. “For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen”, Rom 11: 36.
I think it is all right to serve Him, I do not think the service is all He would have me to think about. No doubt Martha’s service was most agreeable to the blessed Lord, and so is ours now. Some go on a step beyond this, and they are devoted to Him. Most blessed and acceptable to His heart is all this, as seen in Mary. But the one who has come out of death is sitting
“at the table with him”. Oh, the rest and joy of this favour!
How little we know about this! Death must be written by me practically on all here below, before I can know what it is to have passed into another scene where the first man Adam has no entrance, and wherein the second Man, Christ, “is all”, Col 3: 11. What is it to have only Christ’s interests to occupy me day by day? What is it to feed upon that which is provided for Him? Are not the “things that are above” an immeasurable expanse which I am called to sit down and enjoy with Him? For what is His (save His own personal glory) He has called us to Himself to share. The Lord lead us (too often grovelling down here, and satisfied with our service, or our devotedness) to covet more earnestly that quiet spirit which proves in some little measure that we are sitting “at the table with him”, on resurrection ground, and that we have really done with the grave, then our service and devotedness will have their right ring and right place.
From A Voice to the Faithful—vol 25, 1891
351
OR
HOW THE COLOSSIAN BECOMES
A LAODICEAN
One other company of Christians is four times referred to when the apostle Paul was writing to the Colossians. That is the saints gathered to the Lord in Laodicea, see chapters 2: 2; 4: 13, 15, 16. What can be obtained from this? Colosse was near to Laodicea, but others (Ephesus, Smyrna, &c) were also near.
I think one thing is clear enough. It is that spiritually the state of the Colossians then, and that of the Laodiceans, was similar. This is seen from the fact that the truths contained in this epistle were also suited to, and also commended by Paul to the Laodiceans. “And when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans”, Col 4: 16.
It is important for us again and again, to remind one another of a fact, clear enough in scripture, namely, that the leading on into a deeper knowledge of the truth is always dependent upon our present spiritual condition. To him that hath shall be given. If self or the world are allowed to swamp our Christianity, there can be no further communication from God. Thus the apostle fed the Corinthians “with milk, not with meat, for hitherto ye were not able to bear it”, 1 Cor 3: 2. If the Holy Spirit is grieved, He does not communicate to me. He seeks my restoration.
All the truth which the word of God contains is for me to enjoy if I am a Christian, but I am not always in a condition to enjoy it, through lack of faithfulness. The Laodiceans were in a right condition to receive, but the opportunity was not profited by, and thence the loss of that joy which follows faith’s reception, Phil 4: 4.
What, then, was the special communication which the Colossians and Laodiceans received from God, and both 352
at the same time? It was the fact that they were united to the Head, Christ, in heaven, with all that belonged to it.
Their condition of soul before God previous to receiving thus from Paul was “faith in Christ Jesus, and love unto all the saints” (Col 1: 4)—a blessed and a simple state of soul, which the reception of the gospel had begotten in them.
Then the knowledge of the full mystery of God was what they further needed, so that “their hearts might be comforted and knit together”, and preserved from worldly religion and philosophy, see Col 2. The epistle to the Colossians is not corrective (like those to the Corinthians and Galatians), it is preservative.
Now the truth of union with the Head in heaven will
be joyfully accepted by faith and acted on, when I seek His will, or it will be refused. This is the case with every communication which God sends me. He sees just what I want, and the coming danger, too, which will sap and undermine what I have already (though it may be in the distance as yet). This was the character of things with the Colossians. He praises them, but he sees the danger, and the truth ministered is sent to meet it—the Lord says the garrison is to be there before the enemy draws nigh. It is His care of us.
I trust the gospel has begotten in us all the condition of soul and life which was found among the saints at Colosse (and we may also conclude found at Laodicea too).
The truth ministered to each is then the same. What effect had it upon these two companies? A very different one, I think. What will its effect be upon us? We shall, as they did, assuredly go back if we do not in faith accept. The teaching in Colossians is that “Christ is all”. They knew it as they accepted it. But in Laodicea how different. If we turn to the account in Revelation 3, Christ is not all, He is outside, and the saints as a whole content to have Him there. I learn that the heavenly calling rejected, all goes, and ‘poverty’, and ‘blindness’, and ‘wretchedness’, and
‘shame’ appear.
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It is a solemn lesson for us all, and the Lord make us earnest about it. I may be in a right condition today, but if I reject the word to me, “seek those things that are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God” (Col 3: 1), or if I am “not holding the head” (chap 2: 19), I am in danger of accepting what does not come through the Head—“from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God”. The Colossian danger and remedy neglected, may lead me presently to be able to get on without Him in a Laodicean lukewarmness, so utterly repulsive to Him. It is the end of a company to which was once committed the truth of the epistle to the Colossians, and in view of it we may well say, “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall”, 1 Cor 10: 12. Paul gives us our resource, “Continue in prayer”, Col 4: 2.
From A Voice to the Faithful—vol 25, 1891
354
MY PORTION
“It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad”
(Luke 15)
‘‘Bread enough!” More than true! For I feed on His
“KEPT ONE”,
Share with Him in that joy, ’mid the dance and the song,
“This my son”—His own words—to all questions the answer, His own joy supreme, midst that all joyful throng.
“Bread enough and to spare”, I no more feel the famine!
Heart rest felt on His heart, in His mansion above, Seated “in Him”30, oh hour of His gladness and blessing!
I, the wanderer, at home—I His object of love!
Blessed words—“Bread enough”. How they on my lips linger While I taste in this scene all the joy of His heart, Feed at home—know His joy is to have me thus near Him, Night gone; sunlight round, never more to depart!
From A Voice to the Faithful—vol 25, 1891
30 Eph 2: 6
355
AND
HOW HE IS KNOWN
The scoffer before the flood (see Job 22: 15-17) scoffed at the divine revelation of coming judgment. So was it long years after, in Isaiah’s day (see Isa 21: 11, 12), and so is it my reader now, see 2 Pet 3: 3. The Christian should ever remember that the scoffer is one occupied with present things. It is a divine revelation of God’s word THAT JESUS IS
COMING TO THIS WORLD AGAIN. He is coming to judge and end the night, and to usher in a new day. The scoffer hears it, he scoffs at this coming “morning without clouds” (see 2
Sam 23: 4), and with feigned contempt for the folly of those who believe it, he asks them, “Watchman, what of the night?
watchman, what of the night?
Notice then the questioner and consider the question.
Well he knows that for him no “MORNING” draws nigh. It is always something of the night that interests him. ‘What do you think of this or of that present thing?’ With them he is wholly occupied, and with them he would occupy you. He can speak of nothing else.
“The watchman said, THE MORNING COMETH”. He is not occupied with the night, he is occupied with the morning. Ask God’s watchman something about the night, and he will answer you by telling you something about the morning. Why is this? Ah, it is very simple. The night has no interests for him. All his interests are bound up with the morning. He is only here till then. The “man of God” for this day is a watchman, not because there is a night, but because there is a morning. And no morning without Christ.
Hence God’s true watchman today is known, as he has always been known, by his OCCUPATION. He is occupied with the Christ of God and the morning that He will usher in. He is not one fitfully occupied. No. The gloom and the night are ever gloom and night to him, but the light beams 356
on him from afar, and though it may be faint, it rivets the eye of faith as only light can attract amid the gloom. He is compelled to speak of it. “The morning cometh”. And if I am not occupied with, and speaking of, the day, I shall surely be occupied with, and speak of the night.
We have had the scoffer and his coming prophesied
of in 2 Pet 3: 3. And now he walks up and down among us.
He enters our places of business, yea our homes, yea the assemblies of the saints, “That evil servant shall say in his heart, my Lord delayeth his coming, and shall begin to smite his fellow servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken”, Matt 24: 48, 49. Ah, may we not detect his voice even closer still—in our own hearts? The evil servant speaks “in his heart”. Have present things no voice for me there as compared with Christ’s interests? And wherever that voice of scorn is heard (though he may and does disguise it in a thousand ways) it is ever the same—its burden is unchanged, “What of the night. What of the NIGHT”.
Ah, my heart! If it is not with thee present occupation with Christ and with “things above”, what is it? Is it not thyself, and more or less of the night? “Seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God”, Col 3. We belong to heaven, to His side of things, and to all His interests. He is risen. He is the head of all principality and power. I am in the kingdom where He has sway—delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of the Son of His love, Col 1. Darkness and night are no longer cares and interests of mine. I would fain deliver (by the gospel) from them. Darkness! I am even now in the Son’s kingdom, and also made meet to be
“partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light”, v 12. No wonder, then, that a true watchman must be found occupied with the light and with the morning.
It is precious then to the devoted heart—first, To know that there are such watchmen; “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man” (Eph 4: 13), and second, to get into the company of those who speak not of the night but of the 357
morning. Such are true watchmen today. “Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another”, see Mal 3: 16, 17. Thus it has always been, and thus it is still. Jesus is the light of the morning, He who says, “I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star”, Rev 22: 16. “I JESUS”, who is even now seen by the eye of simple faith, to be beyond compare. We must speak of Him.
Of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. “We see Jesus”. “This is my beloved Son: hear him”, Luke 9: 35.
“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me”, John 10: 27. This is enough for the darkest hour of this night.
I am in “the kingdom of the Son of his love”, Col 1: 13. He rules and orders everything for me day by day in this kingdom. I do not trouble about what He is pleased to allow for me there, though it may be counter to my thoughts. I covet rather, my reader, and may you covet also, the living power of the Spirit’s word through God’s true watchman in this day of darkness. Beware of the voice of the scorner, remembering that it is most insidious, and disguised in every variety of form. May you and I become also ourselves true watchmen, in every sense of this word, remembering the words of our blessed Lord and Master—
“And what I say unto you I say unto all, WATCH”, Mark 13: 37. “Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching”, Luke 12: 37.
From A Voice to the Faithful—vol 25, 1891
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I accept God’s word (have communion with Him) as
to the passing away of all things here, and I pray. Prayer is a great test of communion with God. I mean that your praying (that is, ability to pray) indicates whether or not you are in communion, just as the hands of the clock indicate what is going on within it. Since the ascension of our Lord, and the sending down of the Holy Ghost, communion with God is my only right condition. I am privileged to tell everything to God. I tell it to Him because I am in communion.
Prayer is not the utterance of vague and pointless expressions perfectly orthodox. It is simply speaking to God about what affects me or what touches His interests here. I do not belong to this scene, and I can tell Him so, who knows it thoroughly; and more, I tell Him of all that affects me or His people in it. To whom else should I turn? In prayer I express my dependence on God, and also I shew by it that I know that He has an interest in me. Nor only these; I know also and declare by it that He is interested in all that affects me. My weakness is a matter of no moment. He and His power act on my behalf, “Who is the head of all principality and power”, Col 2: 10.
Now in this passage the Spirit of God by the apostle sums up completely all that affects me in my everyday Christian life on earth. Nothing is omitted. Note it well. He does not say, ‘The end of some things is at hand’—things that may be (and are perhaps) unpleasant to me. No; but He says, “The end of all things is at hand”, and on this He bases the exhortation which follows, “Be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer”.
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Sobriety is, I think, that I am not much affected by these daily things through which I am passing31. I am affected by them just thus far; that I speak to God about them. That is all. They may be things apparently pleasing to me, and for this reason incentives to my going astray.
Their “end is at hand”. Hence I tell them to Him. Or they may be trials, personal, or in the church, and I may be depressed and distressed about them. Their “end is at hand”. In each case I tell them to God. Were I unduly affected by the joyful or by the sorrowful scenes which I am called to pass through in the course of my pilgrim life, I could not be looked upon as “SOBER”. And then, whichever it may be, sad or joyful, it has an end. Do the time trials of the church of God, and the distress of His children (so manifest among us of late), affect me? Then my comfort is,
“The end of all things is at hand”, and this is one of these
“all things”. “Be ye therefore sober and watch unto prayer”.
I tell it all out to God, nor am I unduly pressed down by it.
Christ loves the church more than I do, and my work is, if I love Him, to feed His sheep and lambs (John 21: 15-17), and not to occupy the time in weeping over the enemy’s apparent successful turning of so many of them into a by-path. God sees them and knows them (Ps 139: 1, 2) every one.
This, then, will shew how far there is present communion. “When the test comes, ‘pleasing or painful’,
‘dark or bright’ (that is, each of the scenes of your everyday life), do you turn to God in them? There was an opportunity for prayer in each; were you watching for it? Do you speak to God, and in your feebleness commend the matter to Him and to His strength? No life of communion could equal or compare with our blessed Lord as He trod the path of man down here, and none could speak or compare with His life as to prayer. In Him were seen these two, communion, expressing itself in prayer to God.
31 It is the same word as is translated “in his right mind”, in Luke 8: 35. The man has now a right judgment of things ( σωφρονεω). They had their right value in his eyes, and he acted rightly in them.
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My comfort as a Christian is (and it is the comfort of every Christian), that I am now in the kingdom of the Son of God’s love, Col 1: 13. God who loves the Son has given it to Him to control all there, in accordance with His own purposes for me and for His church. I think I shall surely tell all out to God, and seek His will, when I have no will of my own to seek in any matter. If I do, when telling out all to Him, add, “not my will but thine be done” (as our blessed Lord did in the hour of His keenest earthly trial, but in that hour also characterised by perfect communion)—then it is well. But we plan what we think best, and are often self-willed therefore without intending it; then there is little or no prayer. I think we shall find that this results from communion with God being lost. Prayer depends on communion, but by it communion is fed and strengthened.
The importance of prayer may be seen from the Word, see 1
Thess 5: 17; Col 4: 2; Luke 18: 1.
From A Voice to the Faithful—vol 25, 1891
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GOD’S SABBATH OF REST
I think that it is important for us to see that only twice in the history of this world God has been seen in activity, that is, in work. And also that after each work God is seen in His REST.
One work of God was His work of creation, as we get it in Genesis 1. After it He rested. The other work of God is His work of redemption. After this work also we see that God is at rest.
Why I think it is important for us to see this is, that we may see therein, what we believers should be doing.
We had no hand in the first work, it was finished without us, and we can have no hand in the second, for it also is finished! But have we not something to do with the rest?
If God is at rest, it is and can only be because there is no question of sin or sins occurrent. There was no question of sin before God when He first rested, and God is again at rest, because also there is no question of sin or sins before Him today. The question of sin and sins came before God in the Person and work of Christ on the cross. He “bare our sins”, says Peter (1 Pet 2: 24), and He was “made … sin”, says Paul, 2 Cor 5: 21. John says, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”, John 1: 29.
And again, “In him [Christ] is no sin”, 1 John 3: 5. Christ is before God today. “Once in the end of the ages hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself”. He now appears in the presence of God for us. The Lord’s words are “It is finished” (John 19: 30), and “I have finished the work that thou gavest me to do”, chap 17: 4. God is at rest as to the solution of the question of sin and sins. Christ is before God, not “sins and iniquities”, and all these as to His people are remembered no more!
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I will refer to the two passages wherein God’s rest (and the introduction of the sabbath therefore) is referred to. I have spoken already of the first. Genesis 1 and 2 detail this work and its rest, the sabbath. But note it was God who was resting, not man. It was God who had wrought all the stupendous work of creation. Not merely this globe on which we live. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”—“He made the worlds” (Heb 1: 2)—the universe—sun, moon and stars—and in all these—His mighty works—this earth is but a speck probably. But then He gave it the form it now has, and after that He rested. He rested in the perfect goodness of all that He had created and made. The sabbath was GOD’s REST in His own creation, and sin did not exist.
But man was there. Adam was the head of it all, to
hold it all for God. He himself also was part of God’s own handiwork. In seeing that God was resting, we know that God was complacent with Adam, the first man!
GOD WAS RESTING! It was a wonderful moment!
Then “the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy”, Job 38: 7.
But I trust that I may be able also to shew you that we live in a more wonderful moment today; for God is again resting, but now it is in the new creation, His redemption work being over!
Many types of Christ and His work exist in the Old
Testament. They all set it forth in measure, not one comes up to the perfection of the work of Christ, and it is in nothing short of this in which God rests. I would remind you here of the “sin offering”. Christ is seen therein before God as the victim charged with sin (made sin) and bearing to the full the judgment of God due to it. But the victim was totally consumed, afar off, “without the camp”, Heb 13: 13. That is, sin totally disappeared for God in the Person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ! The consequence—seen thereafter—Christ is risen. The type could not give this. In Christ risen we have the witness that sin for God had 363
disappeared. God had now finished redemption work, and God’s rest again comes before us, and for the second time.
We have no mention of the sabbath all through Genesis, so far as I know, (after chap 2), until you come to the type of redemption in Exod 16 and 20, and here again the people—
God’s people—have God’s sabbath—God’s rest—again set before them.
If God is not resting, there is no rest for man. Adam was introduced to paradise when God was resting, for Adam was the last and crowning work of God’s creation. God is resting today. The last Adam, Christ, is before God, and there is a world, a ‘universe of bliss’, not yet displayed, but of which He is the sun and centre. “The world to come, whereof” (the apostle says) “we speak” (Heb 2: 5), is not to be put under angels, but under “MAN”.
He is the “firstborn”, but there are “many brethren”.
Of them, that is, of each, HE IS NOT ASHAMED, Heb 2: 11.
No! It is not now the “morning stars” singing together at the dawn of this wonderful day. It is Christ in the midst of His own. “In the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee”, v 12. It is the day of God’s own joy. God is resting in Christ. He slept, and God took out and formed the woman, bone of His bone. Then we have the man and the woman, without sin, and God at rest.
The Old Testament is a most beautiful picture gallery.
Christ was before God in the pictures there painted. Each picture of Christ—each type—is the handiwork of God. But we need the light to illuminate a picture gallery, or the most beautiful pictures can have no beauty to us. Christ in the New Testament provides and is the light. We profit thereby by the work of the Spirit.
All “the feasts of the Lord” are heralded by God’s rest, see Lev 23. The sabbath is set first. Indeed, how could God invite His people to feast with Him if He were still not at rest, since if any man say that he have no sin, he deceiveth himself and the truth is not in him, 1 John 1: 8. But God has Christ before Him, as the divine negation of sin. All the 364
“feasts of the Lord” are God’s invitation to His people to the celebration of his own, GOD’s, delight in Christ. They (we, now) set Christ before God in what they offered, and we rejoice. We do not know how much they understood of it, but it was not written only for them, it was written for us.
We ought to understand what is written in the Old Testament, we can res t, we can feast, for we have the light, and the Spirit, and it was all written for us, see 1 Cor 10: 11.
For us then it is rest—Christ and no sin. He will appear the second time “without sin” (Heb 9: 28), that is, with no question about it. We shall soon see Him “as he is”
(1 John 3: 2), and “in him is no sin”, by faith we see Him thus today. “We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels … crowned with glory and honour”, Heb 2: 9. There will come the full display of God’s rest. This I take it is what Heb 4 speaks of. But God is not waiting for display, nor are we. For us today it is Christ and no sin.
The victim has exhausted the fire (the judgment of God) in His death. It is not the fire that is left but the exhauster of it. He lives again. In Him, as I have said, sin is not, there is nothing in Him obnoxious to the judgment of God. “And we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ.
This is the true God and the eternal life”, 1 John 5: 20.
One word more: the gospel always carried with it the thought of those who received it entering into “God’s rest”, see Heb 4. What has this got in it for us today?
From Food for the Faithful—vol 4, 1891
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CRUMBS OF BREAD
The Man-mediator and the Saviour-God of 1 Timothy
are ONE. He whose heart, fully acquainted with all the need of man, went out to him not as an angel but as a Man, is God. God was found in fashion as a man, so that He might reconcile all things to Himself! In death, the death of Christ, there is the passing away of man and of all the offence. In the resurrection of Christ, man is seen in righteousness. All that delights the heart of God comes into view in permanence. Thence comes the reconciliation. A MAN
meets a man—the perfect remains and the imperfect passes away.
Do things bear witness to this here on earth? ‘Not yet’, Heb 2. But remember, “Behold, I shew you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed”, and
“things’’ must all be reconciled—that is, made new.
Suitability of all “things” to this reconciliation must appear!
Still “you hath he reconciled”, Col 1: 21. This means that already there is God’s rest. God is perfectly complacent, and there is no disturbing element for the “you” who are reconciled.
From Food for the Faithful—vol 4, 1891
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