THE PRESENT MINISTRY OF CHRIST
[p. 420] THE PRESENT MINISTRY OF CHRIST
Deuteronomy 1:1 - 8; 2 Corinthians 3:1 - 18
What I have in view in reading these scriptures is to speak about the present ministry of Christ. Christians generally have little or no knowledge of the Lord as Minister. Indeed, many of the Lord’s dear people could hardly give an account of the Lord at all, if they were questioned; and where ignorance of Him in regard to His present place exists, there is great exposure. Saints in such ignorance are exposed to the enemy in a peculiar way.
You will remember how of old, when Moses was on the mount with the Lord, the Israelites said: “For this Moses, the man that has brought us up out of the land of Egypt — we do not know what has become of him!”, Exodus 32:1; and in that state the suggestion was made by the people that Aaron should make gods for them. That is to say, ignorance of or indifference to the Lord, exposes us to the awful sin of idolatry. They said, “We do not know what has become of him!”, Exodus 32:1.
One is reminded in that connection, by way of contrast, of a lover of Christ. The Song of Solomon depicts the exercises of such a one. The Lord alone, beloved, knows these exercises. He know the diverse elements in us even though having love for Him, If there be love in us, He has set it there, but He knows, alas! what is there, within us, which accompanies it, and what discipline is necessary in order that that love should come to light in its own brilliancy and purity. Indeed, in reading John’s writings, we are impressed with this, that he insists on things being just as they are. Everything must be of its own kind. There must be no admixture. The divine nature must be brought to light and so the discipline [p. 421] is necessary, in order that all contrary to it might go. Hence Peter says to the Lord, “thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee”, John 21:17. The Lord did know, but in order that it should come into evidence the process of discipline had to be introduced. The feminine speaker in the Song of Solomon had to go through the discipline, but she was a lover of Christ. It is a love song, and not a one-sided one, thank God! There are two speakers in it.
That is what the Lord is aiming at. He would bring us to join Him, and so, if you read that book, you will see how it is brought about: the bride comes to the point of describing the object of her affections. She knew Him so well that she could delineate His Person in His absence. She presents a perfect picture without the Person being before her eyes. His appearance was so impressed upon her that she could delineate it, and so impress others that they asked her, “Whither is thy beloved gone?” Can you tell, Christian, where He now is? “Whither is thy beloved gone, ... that we may seek him with thee?”
(Song of Songs 6:1). Do you know, dear brethren, that if we know the Lord and can speak of Him rightly, as she could, that others, with whom we come into contact would like to know Him too, and seek Him with us? She can describe Him, and then tell where He is. “My beloved”, she says, “is gone down into his garden”, Song of Songs 6:2.
Now, it is as apprehending the Lord thus that we come to rightly understand His present ministry, the ministry of His love, and that, I apprehend, is in view in the glory of the Lord in the chapter read from 2 Corinthians, which we behold.
We read of the glory of Christ in the next chapter. He has varied glories. Indeed, every glory rests on Him in some way. Any glory, or fancied glory, that does not rest there is to be disregarded. So that, if [p. 422] it be the glory of the Lord, it is the glory of One who administers. Do you know, Christian, what that is? Have you discovered in your spiritual history that there is One in heaven who is caring for you constantly? If you are sick, He is the physician. If you are in trouble, He is the sympathiser. No ill can befall you, no sorrow can arise, that He cannot meet.
So you find this: you become acquainted with Him and presently you say, Well, it is the Lord. You trace everything to Him. Not one thing can happen without Him, and as you accustom yourself to connecting everything with Him, you gradually see the wisdom of every move, of every occurrence, and presently you see the love that is in it, for wisdom is but the handmaid of love, and as you see the love you see the glory. The glory of the Lord — the One who on high is watching over every saint on earth.
You say, What place have I to fill? Well, the first thing for you to discover is the place you have in the heart of Christ. The first thing is to know Him — to read the breastplate. Learn to read it. You will find your own name in it, and, as you discover your name there, you begin to see that all the official power vested in Christ is for the moment active on your behalf. Can anything be greater than that? All His official power for the moment active on the behalf of the loved ones.
I never tire of referring to Paul’s words: “The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me”, (Galatians 2:20). He knew the place that he had in the breastplate, and never doubted that the love of Christ pursued him from the outset of his spiritual career until he finished it, and was received by the Lord. One is here reminded of the Rock which followed Israel. Paul says, “That Rock was Christ”, 1 Corinthians 10:4. Think of that! He followed them, a mighty Water-Carrier as it were in the wilderness. The blessed [p. 423] Lord thus attends to us in His grace. The Rock which followed them was the Christ, and they all drank of it. Think of the grace in His heart, leading Him to follow us in the wilderness, to refresh us with the abundance of water that He has.
Then the Ark went before, the people to seek out a resting place for them. They took three days’ journey from the mount of Jehovah, and the Ark went before them in the three days’ journey. The Rock was behind and the Ark before; as the Ark moved, Moses said, “Rise up, Jehovah, and let thine enemies be scattered; and let them that hate thee flee before thee”, Numbers 10:35.
The Lord goes before and follows after, and what is in between beloved? The High Priest! He is capable, it says, of being touched with the feelings of our infirmities — the feelings of them. So you see how the Lord takes account of us in His administration, and how ultimately, if not now, we come, through His gracious dealings with us, to behold the glory of the Lord; this is as we come to know Him.
As already indicated, this is something to be proved every day. In every experience, whatever it may be, you may see the Lord. Look for Him! One has often referred to the bow in the cloud; Genesis 9. That is what faith looks for. You see the Lord in the cloud. Directly the cloud arises — the sorrow, or whatever it may be, look for the Lord in it, and as you look for Him, and see Him, you will see the glory.
Stephen looked steadfastly into the heavens. As a Jew, he would have feelings of sorrow as he saw the Sanhedrim of Israel — that which should have stood for what was right — gnashing their teeth upon him.
He would have no thought of himself, but of the glory disappearing from the beloved nation. It was a calamity, a dark cloud for any godly Jew to witness, and Stephen felt it. (The Lord Himself, in contemplating Israel’s rejection of Him and the judgment [p. 424] about to fall in consequence, had wept over Jerusalem.) Yet, in the presence of all this, Stephen looked steadfastly into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus there.
We may be assured, beloved brethren, that whatever the sorrow in our circumstances, it has not come without Him, and His love is behind all His dealings with us.
Well now, I wanted to show from Moses, the nature of the ministry connected with the passage in 2 Corinthians. You see, in Deuteronomy we have the man. In Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, we have the official — the apostle, but in Deuteronomy the man himself speaks, and so you will find that in Deuteronomy 10 when Moses was about to go up to the mount the second time, Jehovah says to him, “Make thee an ark of wood”, Deuteronomy 10:1. There is nothing said about the gold of the ark. It is no question now of God setting Himself forth in Christ, but of a man who is capable of sympathy for the saints, who knows what the flesh in us is capable of, and that it is useless to cultivate it, or expect anything from it. Hence it is what Moses says, as you will observe, not what he was commanded to say. The man Moses was used but it is what he says according to what Jehovah commanded him, it is not authoritative statements but an exposition. The word ‘unfold’ is used: “On this side the Jordan ... began Moses to unfold (or expound) this law”, Deuteronomy 1: 5. In other words, he is a type of the Lord Jesus as giving effect to the covenant — and therein lies the glory of the One foreshadowed. It is a Man that can sympathise with us, that knows us well, but who, at the same time, knows the heart of God perfectly, who is foreshadowed in the book of Deuteronomy.
The Lord Jesus is still unfolding, one might say. He is unfolding the covenant, making the love of God effective. Paul says here of God: “Who has [p. 425] also made us competent as ministers of the new covenant”, or perhaps strictly, “New covenant ministers”, 2 Corinthians 3:6. They were employed. The ministry is carried on by the Lord Jesus. It is His glory. In this respect, His glory is to make the love of God effective in your heart and in mine!
The Lord Jesus knows the love of God perfectly. He has given the fullest effect to it in dying, but He seeks to give present effect to it in our hearts. It is a work delightful to Him, to bring the love of God into my heart and set it there, so that it becomes active Godward and saintward, and that is His glory. He garnished the heavens; He upholds all things by the word of His power, but the ministry He is exercising now is peculiarly, “the glory of the Lord”. Even that which was done away was introduced with glory, but there is “that which abides”. It is not only introduced with glory, it “subsists in glory”. Marvellous ministry! The Mediator can lay one hand upon God and the other hand upon us; He knows the heart of God, and then, beloved. He knows our hearts too. And to find a way whereby He brings what is in the heart of God into our hearts, calls into activity wonderful grace and wisdom in this His great service.
Paul and his associates were new covenant ministers. That is to say, they were employed by the Lord, but not here as bondmen; they were “ministers”. The word is different from bondmen. They had part in the ministry, but the Lord is the Mediator of the new covenant; the ministry of it is carried on by Him. It is His ministry, and, as I said, Moses at the end of his path foreshadows it. He was at this time one hundred and nineteen years old. His life was divided up into three forties. He had been forty years in Egypt; forty years, as we may say, with God in the desert; and forty years with God and the people in the desert. It is one thing to be with God alone in [p. 426] the desert, but another thing to be with God and the people in the desert. Being with God and the people there, he came to know them, and God in relation to them. He says of God, at the end of the third forty years, “Yea, he loved the people”, Deuteronomy 33:3. God loved the people; Moses knew that love. In the last year of his life he says virtually, I want to make that love effective in the people insomuch as it lies in me. This corresponds with what the Lord Jesus is doing today.
The book of Deuteronomy is the glory of Moses. “These are the words which Moses spoke”, it says, and he spoke them, as before stated in the last year of his life, after he had slain Sihon the king of the Amorites, and Og, king of Bashan; (Deuteronomy 1:1 - 4). You say, What does that mean? Well, it means that the Lord has brought down the flesh in us. He cannot make effective the love of God in us, in our hearts, if the flesh is dominant — that big “I”. You know, that Og was a very big man. I believe he represents you and me in our natural estimate of ourselves. I need not remark on the disposition of the flesh to exalt itself. The Corinthians, I believe, entertained Og. The apostle says, “ye are puffed up”. (1 Corinthians 5:2) Evil was in their midst and they were not ashamed of it. They were reigning as kings. They were inflated, and so had to be brought down. Og has to be slain, and Sihon, the king of the Amorites. These two kings are not in the land. They refer to you and me, to each of us naturally, before we reach the land, and the work of the Lord is to bring down the corresponding elements in us. Before we get the precious ministry of Moses, contained in Deuteronomy, Sihon and Og were slain. This is an important consideration for us.
It is after that, beloved, that you get this rich unfolding of the covenant. You are now ready for it — ready for the love of God, and so Moses in this [p. 427] wonderful book unfolds the spirituality of the law. What he brings out is that it was the love of God that was behind it, and the great result to be produced was love in the saints. Hence the lawyer asks the Lord, “Which is the great commandment in the law?” and the Lord quotes from Deuteronomy: “Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy understanding”, Matthew 22:37. That was the law. It was the first and great commandment, showing that God is after the love of our hearts. But how can He get love from our hearts if He does not put it there? The glory of the Lord is to put that love there. He places the love of God in our hearts and that is the ministry of the covenant.
Then the Lord says, “The second is like it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments the whole law and the prophets hang”, Matthew 22:39,40. In Deuteronomy you have the unfolding of the law; that is, what lay behind it. The first thing Moses refers to in the unfolding is that God had said to the people that they should go into the land of Canaan; Deuteronomy 1: 7, 8. He wants you to go into it, but how are you to go into it? In the sense of your own importance? No, it is after the destruction of Og and Sihon. Then you are ready for the love of God. If we go into the land; if we are to be, dear brethren, in family relationships, it must be as having the love of God in our hearts, and so the covenant, as I may say, subserves the family.
The Lord brings love into our hearts. He sets it there and the outcome is that we love God, and we love the brethren. It is in that light we go into the land of Canaan. Family affections belong strictly to Canaan, the sphere of the Father and Son. We go into it as having everything adjusted attaching to our responsibility in regard to us. We love God and our neighbour; we work righteousness; all that is [p. 428] the result of the covenant ministry of Christ, and now we go into Canaan. Hence yon have in this book, “Ye are the sons of Jehovah”, Deuteronomy 14:1. You are to go in in the light of family relationships. The covenant subserves this relationship, so that we are in Canaan in the knowledge that we are sons of God and brethren of Christ.
Well, now, dear brethren, that is the burden of what I have to say, but I wish to add a word as to “the Spirit of the Lord”. Paul says, God has made us new covenant ministers, not of the letter, but of the spirit. That corresponds with Deuteronomy. The spirit of the covenant is Deuteronomy. Then he says, “now the Lord is that Spirit”. One might inquire, Why does it not say Jesus is that Spirit, or Christ is that Spirit? Well, the Holy Spirit is accurate, and is occupying us with one thing in this chapter, the ministry of the Lord and the manner in which it is carried on among the saints. It is carried on in holy liberty. It is what the Lord is doing; it is an administration. He is endeavouring to introduce into our hearts the love of God. Paul says, “having this ministry ... we faint not”, 2 Corinthians 4:1. He had part in it. Christ was acting through him, so he says, “We faint not”, nor do we put a veil, like Moses, on our faces. And then he goes on to say, “We all, looking at the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, are transformed according to the same image from glory to glory”.
It is the glory of the Lord we see, let us understand what this means. Let us understand what Christ is doing for us. Begin with yourself, for we may thus learn the truth in this sense. See what the Lord has done for you. Trace it back to Him, and in this way you see the glory. It is love that was working all the time. He is aiming at introducing the love of God into our hearts. Whatever He rolls in upon us: trouble, loss of position, sickness, death or what not — it is the love of God that is behind it. So, we all
[p. 429] beholding — every one is the subject of it. “These are the words which Moses spoke”, it says, “to all Israel”, Deuteronomy 1:1. The Lord intends that we all should begin to look with unveiled face at His glory.
It is time, beloved brethren, that we begin to think, and to trace out things, to see why this and that happened. We then learn that all was in view of the love of God being in our hearts. It is the patience and the wisdom of the Lord (His glory is in it), that He has borne with us all this time, for He wants to bring us to Himself, that the love of God may be in your hearts truly, and that there may be the outgoings of it Godward and saintward, and when the Lord effects that in us. He has achieved a triumph that He values. It is His glory, and we are to behold it, and, beholding it, we are changed into the same image.
The word ‘same’ there implies that we are all alike; indeed, the end in view is that all the saints on earth should be brought into this. As the new covenant is made effective in our hearts we behold the glory of the Lord. Thus there is liberty among the saints. It is the Spirit of the Lord, and where this is there is liberty. May God bless the word to us all!