PEACE

E. C. Burr

Philippians 4: 6–7; Luke 24: 36–40, 44–45; John 20: 19–21

I wish to speak about peace and what is to proceed from it. I think, there are many christians maybe some of us here—who in one sense feel that to arrive at peace is to arrive at the end. I have some impression that it is to arrive at the beginning.

If we look back just a little to history through which we have been, it has been difficult and testing. Parts of it have been tumultuous, most of it painful. I think that the Lord has given us the sense as, I trust, we have submitted to His own operations and His own leading, of arriving now, in some degree at least, at a condition of peace. I think that you could write, as Paul does to the Ephesians, “Peace to the brethren”, and that the Lord has brought about conditions in which at least rest in spirit is for the moment enjoyed. I venture to urge on the brethren that each of us takes the responsibility of seeing that that peace is not disturbed. I lay this on the brethren as a responsibility because disturbances to peace do not just rise up by accident. If peace is disturbed amongst the brethren it is somebody’s responsibility—not to say somebody’s fault. And I trust that we have learned enough from the Lord and with the Lord during the history through which we have been for none of us to desire—and for each of us to desire the contrary—that we should be the occasion of peace among the brethren being disturbed now.

The situation externally is weak. Internally, I believe it is in power. I believe that fresh power has been touched, but externally the position is weak, rather as in the days of Nehemiah when one said that if a fox went up he would knock the wall over. That might be thought to be the position externally, but inwardly it is strong; yet this does not obviate my responsibility to see that disturbance does not come in by me.

Brethren will recall how Mr. Taylor spoke at one time of things having been preserved over a very long period without division; he said that the troubles there had been had been mainly local eruptions. Now let none of us be the occasion of a local eruption. There may be things currently within our knowledge where what has to be spoken of as a local eruption has caused pain and difficulty and sorrow. Beloved, these things should not be. There are ways of handling assembly exercises which do not create local eruptions.

But it is not that we are just looking, as Daniel said to Nebuchadnezzar, for a lengthening of our tranquillity—that we would like; what is needed is the understanding of what the Lord would proceed into if He has brought about conditions of tranquillity at all. That the Lord has worked over the past years is without any question—they have not been for nothing. The very quality of what there is amongst the brethren at the present time is a demonstration that those years were for something. Something of substance has come through them. The question is: Where would the Lord take us now? If He has operated to quell disturbance and disturbing elements, He would have something else that He would proceed into and take us into at the present time.

Sometimes, of course, we all seek just a lengthening of our tranquillity. The desire for relief is very deep in us all, from pressure, anxiety, tension, but I trust we are looking for more than that. What Daniel said to Nebuchadnezzar had behind it the urge to the king that he should break off his sins by righteousness, and his iniquities by shewing mercy to the poor, “if it may be a lengthening of thy tranquillity” (Daniel 4: 27). Nebuchadnezzar did not heed the word of the prophet, and the days of his tranquillity were short. Beloved, let us listen to what is prophetic so that the days of our tranquillity may be extended.

But it is not just that we are looking for the extension of a quiet time. The Lord having brought us through would, and indeed has, for a moment given us rest, but I think that He would be saying to us that He is going forward from these conditions, and He desires that we should go forward with Him into what is engaging Him.

Now I could have read many scriptures but I have read these three in order to bring particular things before the brethren. Each of them is familiar; probably few scriptures are more familiar to the brethren than these. The scripture in Philippians connects with what we remarked in the reading that it is possible to proceed beyond prayer into communion. Now the situation in Philippi is not exactly of oppression with external difficulties, nor does there appear to be extraordinary anxiety about internal difficulties in the meeting. There were evidently things that were of some concern to the brethren, and you can see that Paul was meeting them with positive ministry and with the truth. He was bringing in that healing ministry with the skill of one who would meet troublesome local conditions that might easily have come into a festering state with ministry whose profundity has not been exhausted up to the present day.

The references in Philippians 2 to the mind that was in Christ Jesus and the One Who was in the form of God yet took a bondman’s form and was found in figure as a Man, we have not exhausted, and shall not, but they were brought in in case the tendency to division at Philippi should get any farther. Paul does not occupy us with the local state but you can discern what he was meeting by the ministry he brings in, yet the ministry he brings in is of such profundity that, as I say, it has not been exhausted yet, nor will it be in our day. There will always be something beyond us in understanding, how One Who was in the form of God was found in figure as a Man. This is the way in which local conditions are met, but the conditions are not tense, or heretical, or anything like that; the conditions are generally good.

Paul is not, therefore, saying to the Philippians that they needed to be urgent in their prayers and supplications for some local condition; what he is doing is referring to the normal activity of brethren in a locality, that there would be prayers and supplications. He says, “Be careful about nothing; but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God”. Now this is exactly the line that he urges on Timothy in 1 Timothy 2. He exhorted that there should be supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings; but in Philippi these things were going on. They would be requests and petitions about the needs of the brethren and of the testimony, but Paul passes from that quickly into “the peace of God, which surpasses every understanding”. Now, to my mind, that peace is something far, far beyond any anxiety I might have about my circumstances, or about the local meeting, or any problems that might be current, or any external situation in the world.

The peace which surpasses every understanding is a description of what I might describe as the atmosphere in which God Himself abides.

Now, who has passed from prayer and supplication into that sphere? Who here has got beyond asking the Lord to come in and meet some particular circumstance to touch peace which surpasses every understanding? Paul here is touching something which is a quality which he cannot adequately describe. It is “the peace of God”, the peace in which God Himself abides; which He has never left; which has never been disturbed by anything which has come into the created sphere; a peace which is beyond every moral issue; which has subsisted and is the reason why every moral issue has to be settled, because this peace must remain undisturbed and unchallenged. It is the peace in which God Himself subsists. It is not the nature of God, but it is very very close to what is the nature of God, which is love. I am sure that when we are held in the peace which surpasses every understanding we would not be able to distinguish the names we give to things; that is, we would say, This is peace; but it must be love. To abide in a peace which is known to you as love seems to me to be touching something John alludes to in his epistles when he refers to abiding in God. The peace that surpasses every understanding no man can describe. You cannot exactly come away and give an address or a word about what this is; even if you could describe it, it surpasses every understanding. I think it is one of the things Paul experienced as a man in Christ when he heard unspeakable things which it is not lawful for a man to utter. There in that sphere, where he knew a man in Christ, was a peace which surpassed every understanding. And he says it will guard your hearts and thoughts by Christ Jesus.

Now many of us, I think, regard this as merely protective in the sphere of things in which we live; we are to be safeguarded and watched over, rather as a shepherd watches over the sheep so that they being inside with God which protects your hearts and your thoughts. It does not say here it protects your actions or your body or that it protects you circumstantially; it protects what is inward in you, your hearts and your thoughts, so that nothing can enter into your heart which is inconsistent with the peace which subsists in the presence of God Himself, and nothing can enter into your thoughts but what is consistent with the presence of God Himself. In fact, I think that when this is touched nothing enters into the heart or the thoughts that does not proceed from God Himself.

Many of us have to face the question which was raised in the reading as to distinguishing between what comes from the will of man and what comes from the Spirit of God, but if we knew the peace of God which passes every understanding we would know that as we remained in the atmosphere and power of that peace our hearts and thoughts were guarded so that untoward and evil things could not enter into them. This must touch what Jesus left with the disciples in John 14, “I give my peace to you”. Nobody could say that His peace had anything to do with the moral question which has disturbed our relations with God and brought us into circumstances where peace is not enjoyed. “My peace” is apart from every moral issue; it is apart from conscience or failure or doubt. It is the peace of a known and subsisting relationship with God as abiding with Him and in His presence. You learn these things in Jesus as a Man here. What you learn in Him as a Man here is opened up to you as a possibility for your own soul to touch, even as you are a man here. I believe it can only be touched in the power of the Spirit of God, but it is a great thing to have had the experience at all of moving from being before God in prayer into a peace which surpasses every understanding. That is, you are touching things in the tranquillity of God Himself, “Where deceiver ne’er can enter. Sin-soiled feet have never trod”, but you find that your feet can freely move in the paradise of God in a sphere where nothing has ever been disturbed and God Himself rests in His love already. As we are there resting in His love we would say that this is a peace which surpasses every understanding.

There has been much prayer in regard to things that have taken place amongst us and there is much prayer continuously as to the exigencies of the testimony, but if we were lifted into the peace that surpasses every understanding, everything else would fall into its own place and proportions and we would be here held in the power of the presence of God and in the power of a sphere where nothing ever interrupts the enjoyment of God resting in His love in a sphere where everything is at peace. It is a great thing, beloved, to move from the experience of the Lord giving us peace, in measure at least, as to the exigencies of assembly history, into this sphere where our portion is to be before God and enjoy Him. It is the sphere in which the service of God Himself should proceed. It should not proceed in a sphere of distraction and anxiety and tension. As soon as the Lord comes in amongst us there should be the experience of a peace that surpasses every understanding guarding our hearts and thoughts by Christ Jesus, so that the power of the service of God is sustained in the presence of God Himself in conditions where the enjoyment of His love is uninterrupted and never entrenched upon.

May the Lord give us to move into that. He has given us a good starting point. The Lord has come in in power and shown that. He is able to say, “Silence, be mute”, or, as it says in the Authorised Version, “Peace, be still”. Are we just looking for the lengthening of our tranquillity, or are we looking for a deepening of what peace actually is as a thing to be enjoyed and entered into, so that we touch a peace which corresponds with abiding in God and abiding in love?

Beloved, these things are not intended to be beyond us. They are not too profound for me, or for you. The understanding of the greatest of us is very, very small. If I could just illustrate this, a fiftieth of an inch is double a hundredth of an inch. But a fiftieth of an inch is not much. And when you look at things in proportion to the scale of what is eternal, in which God Himself is, I am puny, and you are puny, and if you are a little better than me we would do well not to compare ourselves with ourselves, because the greatest of us is small in comparison with that sphere. Let us, beloved, seek to grow without comparing ourselves with ourselves, which Paul says is not wise; let us go on according to what we have and seek to progress and to grow from the point of advantage that the Lord has given us at the present time. I do urge on the saints that they should not merely look for the lengthening of their tranquillity, but that they should use it as a means of progressing into deeper and more profound and more spiritual experience. Many mystics have sought after this kind of experience since men began to think about God; they have longed for this kind of experience where they were held in relation to God, and few find it, because they are not willing to recognise that the first step in peace was made by the blood of His cross. But for those who are—and, thank God, those who are here this morning are ready to recognise that peace has been made by the blood of His cross—it opens the door into a peace that surpasses every understanding. That is far, far greater than relief from assembly sorrow.

Now, I have referred to the two scriptures in the ends of the gospels because in each one Jesus comes in and says, “Peace”. And having said it, He points the way into something that is further. We have often referred to these scriptures and I do not expect that I shall say anything new about them. I would always be careful, while believing firmly that the Spirit is able in our day to say things that to us will be new, about thinking I was the man who could say them. But the Lord would give us some fresh impression about things.

Jesus comes in in Luke and He says, “Peace be unto you”. Now, what did the disciples expect? Well, they were very troubled, they were anxious, disturbed in their hearts, and He says, “Peace”. Now, what do you expect after He has said, “Peace”? Do you expect Him to go back and explain to you what the circumstances of the past days had meant? Do you think that He would come in and say; “I know you are troubled about all these things, and now I will explain them to you”? He does that. But the way He does it is by identifying Himself to them, but in a new condition. He does not take them back to what He was in flesh and blood amongst them, save that His hands and His feet would remind them of it. What He does is to engage them with Himself as about to enter into the ascended condition into which He was going. Although He does not directly refer to it here, as He does in John, it is referred to in the end of the gospel because He was separated from them and carried up into heaven. But He comes in and says, “Peace”. Now, what will He say next? What He says is, “Why are ye troubled? … Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself”. I think this suggests to us that if the Lord comes in, as He has come in, and gives peace to His saints, what He will do will be to engage them with Himself in an intimacy that I do not think they had ever known before. I do not think that earlier in the gospel He invites them to handle Him and see. A woman did—a woman poured ointment on His feet. On another occasion ointment was poured on His head, but a woman poured ointment on His feet, and kissed His feet and wiped them with her hair. All this involved His being handled, but “Handle me and see” is a new experience. It is Himself in a new condition, and the substantiality of it apprehended. And it is from an experience of peace that the Lord says this. He comes in and says, “Peace”, and then He says, “Handle me and see”—‘Prove that it is Me. Become familiar with Me in the new condition in which I am’. Beloved, what a thing to do, as the Lord has introduced peace among the brethren, to be engaged with Him as entering into a new condition, He has laid aside one condition, and He will never take it again. He has entered into another condition in which He will soon have us with Him in bodies of glory like His own.

The only way you become familiar with a body of glory now is by contemplating, in your spiritual senses, Jesus in a body of glory. But think of the intimacy of what is open to you!

You may say, “How can I do it? He is there, and I am here”. But you have the Spirit, and the Spirit is the connection between yourself and Jesus glorified. Have you, as it were, in the power of the Spirit, handled Him and seen from your present experience of peace? It is a very great thing to do. He says, “A spirit has not flesh and bones as ye see me having”. And they would soon discover this in the tangibility of what was there. The body of glory in which He is something into which we are soon going to be transformed and for the moment He is alone in it. I keep on saying this because I feel the heresy of claiming that anyone else is yet in a body of glory. He is there in it alone, but by the Spirit we can learn what He is as glorified. “Handle me and see”—‘I am entering into a new condition, and I have given you peace so that you might touch what I am in a new condition’.

Reference was made in the reading to the way in which at the present time what is prophetic would engage us with Jesus as He is—glorified. This scripture would suggest that that is so, that you are engaged with Him as entering into new circumstances and a new condition. Have you become familiar with Him there? Have you become familiar with the feet under which everything has been put? “He has put all things in subjection under His feet” (1 Corinthians 15: 27). It is not even contemplated that that is future. “He has put all things under His feet”.

Have you become familiar with His hands? The Father has put everything into them. Handle Him and see. You have enough peace, and you have enough time of peace, to do it. Your tranquillity is not just for you to sit back and enjoy; it is a point of departure for you to begin to explore realms that you previously never thought you could enter into. He comes and makes Himself available, and He says “Handle me and see”.

Then He opens up the scriptures, Moses, prophets and Psalms. “He opened their understanding to understand the scriptures”. I feel, beloved, that one thing everybody would say is that in the condition of peace that the Lord has brought about He has opened our understanding to understand the scriptures. Few of us feel very tall in our understanding of the scriptures. We are mostly one-hundredth of an inch high—not even a fiftieth of an inch!—in our understanding of the scriptures, but they are very, very blessed. And as we sit in a meeting things can come into your mind from the scriptures that you had never previously thought of. Sometimes a thing a brother says in a reading is as fresh light to him as it is to you, because He is opening their understandings to understand the scriptures. What a thing to depart into when He has said “Peace” to you! Is He just lengthening out your tranquillity so that you might sit back and enjoy a good time for the rest of the time? No—He is giving you scriptures to understand, and He is helping you to understand them—as in the things “our beloved brother Paul” said, there are things hard to be understood, but the One who opened understandings is still able to open understandings. The Lord would take advantage of the peace that He has brought about to help you to understand the scriptures. I hope all the brethren realise how much profit we have currently through being together with a united mind as to seeking out the truth. Diversions have caused a vast loss of time to the brethren. The profit that there is when all are together on the basis of peace, pursuing things with the same desire, is immense. He is opening our understanding, and He has brought about peace in order that He might do it. Does not this take you back to what I was saying a little earlier?—that you would not want to be the one who disturbed that peace among the brethren, because it would be hindering their progress in their understandings into what the Lord is giving them.

How you come to love the scriptures: You pick them up, and find that there is something fresh in them that you had never noticed before. I find when I am considering matters, waiting on the Lord in regard to any service, that I get much further if I have the Bible in my hand than if I have not. If you have the Bible open, and you just turn the pages, you will find that things begin to connect together and to flow together. Whereas if you think, “O well, I could think about that on the way to the office”, it does not work in quite the same way. The Lord is very gracious, and He comes down to our capacities, but the way to get hold of the truth, and to prepare yourself in regard to divine things and divine service is to take up the Bible and open it and reflect on it. Even your scantiest reflection will yield something, because He opens your understanding to understand the scriptures. And the Spirit of God who indited them can connect one scripture with another in a way that the natural mind would never even imagine. The power of the unifying effect of the service of the Spirit in inditing the scriptures comes through in the way in which He gives it cohesion in your mind as you may prepare.

Well, I would suggest that out of the peace that the Lord has given He would enlarge us in our understanding of the scriptures. How thankful we are for every brother amongst us—every sister, who, privately, can tell us something more about the truth of God than we knew before. Not everybody takes fellowship meetings; not every brother even preaches, and certainly not every brother gives words on Tuesday nights, although many brothers could who never do. (I just venture that little reminder as to responsibility). But I am thankful for every remark I hear that enlarges my understanding of the things of God, no matter which brother or sister says it. It helps us to value one another, and if we had to identify from where we have drawn everything that we know, I think we would probably have to have a muster-roll of nearly all the saints we have ever known. He opened their understandings to understand the scriptures—He did it because there was peace.

Now, in John, another familiar scripture, again He comes in, and He says, “Peace”. “Jesus came and stood in the midst, and says to them, Peace be to you … The disciples rejoiced therefore, having seen the Lord. Jesus said therefore again to them, Peace be to you”. That is to say, as Mr. Stoney said, if He speaks again, He says the same thing again. In between, He shows them His hands and His side. He does not here invite them to handle Him and see, but clearly He is engaging them, in a condition of peace, with things that relate to what is intimate to Him—not just intimate to us, but intimate to Him.

Do you understand anything about the formation of the assembly as taken out of His side? That is what He would tell you in John when He has said, “Peace”. He would show you His hands, the great Administrator of everything for the Father. But He would show you His side, where in the typical scripture the woman was formed as the rib was taken out of the man. I wish I understood more of what the actual formation of the assembly involved. Mr. Taylor has some very interesting remarks on Psalm 139 as to it being formed and the way it was formed in the death of Christ, the way its members were written in God’s book, and so on; but do you understand anything about the way in which the assembly was formed? When He says “Peace” to you He would show you His side. He would point you to the beginning of where this great vessel came from as to its formation. Not as to counsel; not as to purpose—all that was there long before—but where it began by way of formation. He would say, “Peace”. There was never such an occasion of peace in this world as when a deep sleep fell upon Adam, and he slept. The whole world then at peace, and Adam asleep and undisturbed, even by those profound operations of God. When Christ was in death things were very different for God.

There was not, I think we could say, an echo from the world to God. There was what was in the disciples; but when Christ was dead, for God all were dead. But in Genesis 2 things must have been at peace, and, out of it, comes the woman.

The Lord, in John 20, says, “Peace”, and He showed them His side. Beloved, these are things that the Lord would help us in. This is not to get us lost in a kind of spiritual mysticism; it is to help us understand the foundations of things that we handle in experience every day in which we spend any time on spiritual things.

And then He says, “Peace be to you—as the Father sent me forth, I also send you”. Have you had the experience of being sent forth from a condition that He Himself has ordered, to be sent forth as the Father sent Him forth? He was sent forth in peace. When He was born, peace on earth was contemplated; glory in the highest, but peace on earth. There was one Man here in whom God could find peace, and He was sent forth in peace. A Babe in a manger—perfect peace. A little Boy in the temple—perfect peace. As the Father sent Him forth, so He would send us forth, but as the Father sent Him forth He was there about His Father’s business, standing in peace amidst what I suppose in other circumstances would have been an area of debate and even of argument; but the answer to every argument was there, and He was hearing and asking them questions; sent forth by the Father in conditions of peace. And He served and ministered and healed, and recovered people and restored people; He went about doing good. He was sent forth from a condition of peace, and in a similar way He would have us sent out. Is it really possible to maintain the testimony of God from a background of disorder and disquiet and tension? We have tried it, and the Lord has been very gracious. The Lord would have us now go out from conditions of peace as the Father sent Him out. Do you take up your testimony in anxiety? Are you afraid of the world? Afraid of men about you?

Not if you come out from this condition, beloved. A man who has touched the peace that passes every understanding will have his thoughts and his heart guarded; so he can go out as sent by the Lord Jesus Himself. What a quality in testimony that would bring out.

Let us, beloved, therefore, make sure that we are appropriating the purpose for which the Lord has given us any taste of peace at the present time. Let us not, seek just to use it for our own enjoyment. It will be for our enjoyment. But let us not just take advantage of what we may speak of as quieter conditions. Let us understand that the Lord has brought these things about with further things in view, and it is for us to apprehend what He has in view and to take them up and to pursue them with Him. “I leave peace with you; I give my peace to you”—what a foundation for testimony, for the service of God—you might indeed say for anything. What a foundation for learning; what a foundation for understanding the scriptures when the One who understood them all has Himself given you peace in yourself.

Beloved, the Lord would have us not just take advantage of the moment and rest in it. He would not have us just merely looking for a lengthening of our tranquillity; He would look for us to be consolidating what He has established through conflict so that there might be fresh liberty in spheres that may be new to some of us, but are there all the time, just for us to begin to enter into. Beloved, may the Lord help us. May He confirm the brethren in the sense that He has brought peace among them. But, having done that, let us not just rest in it; let us go with Him into what He would have us explore—Himself in new conditions; the understanding of the scriptures; the public testimony; the understanding of what the assembly is to Him—these things are just suggestions; there are many, many, many, more. From the peace that He has given He would have us pass into a peace that passes every understanding, which will guard our thoughts and our hearts.

Beloved, these things are very profound, but the christian’s portion is God; his portion is no less than God. To be before the Father in love, and to know the peace that surpasses every understanding are, I think, when you touch them in experience, indistinguishable.

Let us take advantage of the moment that the Lord has saved for us—and saved us for—so that we may progress into these things without distraction, for His name’s sake.

Redbridge
9th December 1972