STEADFASTNESS

Luke 9: 51; Hebrews 12: 1,2; Ruth 1: 15-18; 2 Samuel 15: 19-22

I would like to speak about the feature of steadfastness. It came into my mind earlier today as thinking about this meeting and about the circumstances of our being together tonight. There is a great need for steadfastness, as our hymn reminded us:-

‘And, if I wander, teach me

Soon back to Thee to flee’.      Hymn 51

We have a perfect model in Jesus; in Him we have a great point of attraction and we need food. Whatever the impression that comes into your heart, the Lord is the supreme example of it. So here we have in the gospel of Luke, that “he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem”. Think of the opposition, the contrariety, and all that came against Him in His life. There was not only the rejection by the Jews and the mockery of the Romans, but the betrayal by Judas and the denial by Peter. The Lord knew about them all, but “he stedfastly set His face”. He was committed irrevocably to the will of God. Dear brethren, especially dear younger brethren, when trials come into our lives and into the testimony, and into localities, there is a great need to concentrate on what Jesus has done, and the Model that He is. I was impressed with that on Lord’s day, that we see every element of perfection in Him; perfect committal, perfect devotion, perfect execution of every divine thought. Everything was carried out perfectly; a perfect redemption, a perfect salvation, a perfect hope. We have it all in Him, and we need it when we are on our wilderness journey.

Hebrews 12 was written to a company of believers, with the exhortation to look “stedfastly on Jesus the leader and completer of faith”. He stands in all His glorious dignity. Chapter 11 gives us a whole catalogue of worthies from the Old Testament who were wonderful persons, but the writer moves from that cloud of witnesses to the supreme Witness. Let every one of us have an increasingly strengthened link with Jesus as Saviour, as Model, as Leader, as Guide. So it says here that we have to “run with endurance the race”, and “laying aside every weight”. I noticed a comment in ministry recently that weights slow us down. If you are in a race, sin will stop you, and weights will slow you down. These can be legitimate things – family or business matters. Oh, let us put these weights aside and let us know what it is to be “looking stedfastly on Jesus”. He will not let us down, He will not disappoint us, He will not ignore us, He will never leave us, He will not forget us. We are on the breastplate; we are on His heart and in His affections. He would desire to carry us and to lead us, because He has carried everything through as “the leader and completer of faith”.

In the Old Testament, I thought of two persons who were steadfast. Ruth was a young woman who had come into terrible sorrow; things had gone terribly wrong in Moab. That is where she belonged, of course; it was not her fault that she was in Moab. That was the country of her birth, but something else had come into her life. Sorrow had come into her life, but then Naomi had also come into her life, a woman who gave her direction. Naomi speaks typically of the saints of the assembly and what they can be as examples to one another. Not only was Naomi an example, but she saw that Ruth was committed herself; “when she saw that she was stedfastly minded”. The brethren know the book of Ruth well; I think it is a wonderful book, one of the most attractive little books in the Bible because in a sense it has the germ of everything. We see Ruth and her commitment in this book, but ultimately we come to Boaz, the mighty man of wealth. I think we need to get that into our hearts, dear brethren. We need to keep the Lord Jesus as the Object, the guiding Light in our lives when difficulties arise; sorrows, departure, whatever it might be. Let us never allow our gaze to depart from our Lord Jesus Christ, typified so beautifully in this book in Boaz.

When we come to 2 Samuel 15, it does not use the word steadfastness, but I think that is what Ittai illustrates. This was a time when things were not good in Israel publicly. There had been great failure with David; his place had been usurped by Absalom and David was in rejection. But did that change Ittai’s outlook or his devotion, did that change his commitment, did that change his loyalty? Was he influenced by circumstances? No; he was holding David in his view as the true king, the man of God’s choice. For the moment David had slipped, but we read in the chapter that he was on the way to the summit, the ascent. Things were beginning to look up again. That is like our lives. It is interesting what David says as to going up and down: “Thou didst come yesterday, and should I this day make thee go up and down with us, seeing I go whither I can?” I think that is like most of our histories, they are up and they are down. But thanks be to God that there was one Man who was never up or down, He was always consistent, He was and is always the Same. So you can understand why at the end of Hebrews, the writer says “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to-day, and to the ages to come”, Heb.13:8.

May these thoughts encourage us.

Word in meeting for ministry Grangemouth

17 June 2014

A. D. Munro