STABILITY

Psalm 2:1-12; Luke 6:47,48; Acts 11:19-26

I seek grace to say a word as to stability. I felt confirmed in bringing Psalm 2 before the brethren in relation to the things that God has done, and the results that are to be found in us.

I cannot remember a time in my life when things have been so confused in the world around us. “Why are the nations in tumultuous agitation”, why is it that there is political confusion and economic uncertainty, that nations rise up against nations? The psalmist is asking the question; “Why are the nations in tumultuous agitation, and why do the peoples meditate a vain thing?”. It is because of the effect of sin, culminating in the rejection of Christ by the world, and all that lies upon the race of man, resulting in nations rising up against nations, the confusion in the world, instability in man’s systems. All of us know the effect of these things. Instability is all around us, but I would like to draw your attention to the One in whom we can find our stability.

There is a verse in Isaiah 33 that has been on my heart where the prophet says, “he shall be the stability of thy times” (v.6). It appeals to me that we are to find our stability in that Man, the Lord Jesus. We will not find it here in the systems of men, we will not find it in ourselves. We will find our stability in Jesus, and I would encourage every one of us, young and old, to find your stability in Him. Commit your heart to Him. Do not wait for the preaching tomorrow, but commit your heart to Jesus now if you have not done so before, and you will find that your stability is in that Man.

Psalm 2 shows us the glory of the One in whom God gives us stability; “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the princes plot together, against Jehovah and against his anointed”. The enemy is set against Jehovah and His anointed. Let there not be any question in our minds as to what Satan is attempting to do; he is set against God and he is set against our Lord Jesus Christ and His people. Satan would seek to bring doubt into your heart as to the person of Jesus, doubt as to His deity, doubt as to the greatness of His manhood. But “He that dwelleth in the heavens shall laugh” – what an encouragement that is – “the Lord shall have them in derision”. God has the answer to everything in Jesus; He has it all in Him, and He is the One in whom we are to find our stability. God cannot be affected by what Satan does. That is a tremendous thing to get into your soul, that God cannot be affected by anything that men do, anything that the enemy does. The enemy may be successful in drawing our hearts away from the enjoyment of what is of God, but he cannot be successful against God. God is not mocked, He will have to say to all of these things, to everything that is against Him. He will speak and act against it; indeed He already has. We were reminded last week that the world lies in the hands of the wicked one, but it is already judged. “Then will he speak to them in his anger, and in his fierce displeasure will he terrify them”.

But then, “I have anointed my king upon Zion, the hill of my holiness”. That is the Man to whom I want to draw your attention, God’s Holy One, the Man whom God has provided and in whom we are to find our stability. And then you get these beautiful verses which speak prophetically of the Lord Jesus, “I will declare the decree: Jehovah hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; I this day have begotten thee”. The only person who can make a decree is a sovereign. Even the Prime Minister cannot make a decree, she has to go to Parliament, but the sovereign can. God has made a decree. This brings us to the immutable, unshakeable purpose of God. He established the decree. He established in His mind and in His heart and in the infinite majesty of His ways, that there would be One of whom He could say prophetically, referring to Jesus coming into manhood, “Thou art my Son”. Jesus came here into such lowly circumstances; words fail as to the greatness of the One who came into such circumstances of obscurity. He was laid in a manger, because there was no room in the inn. We know these things well, but I wonder for myself how much the greatness and the glory of the incarnation really affects me. God came into this whole scene in the person of Jesus so that there might be an answer for Himself, in One who came into such circumstances of lowliness to do the will of God. Jesus walked in this scene, every step fulfilling that will perfectly and utterly.

“Thou art my Son; I this day have begotten thee”. God finds in Christ that which delights Him. And then you get this beautiful verse, “Ask of me, and I will give thee nations for an inheritance, and for thy possession the ends of the earth”. We were reminded last week that the Lord could have asked for anything, but we were also reminded that the Lord refers to this in John 17, when He says to His Father, “I do not demand concerning the world, but concerning those whom thou hast given me …” (v.9). Think of the Lord Jesus demanding concerning those whom the Father had given Him. My simple impression is that that brings you and me into this area of utter stability where there is that which is unshakeable.

In Luke, the Lord raises a challenge. He speaks of three things and I would challenge firstly myself and all of us about them. “Every one that comes to me …”: dear hearer, are you prepared to come to Him? To whom do we turn when we need something or when we need help? Sadly, I would have to say that too often I look to myself. But “Every one that comes to me …” – may we be helped and stimulated to come to Him, to turn to Him. If Jesus is the One on account of whom God in the heavens can laugh, surely He is to be my stability, surely He is to be my everything.

Then, “Every one that comes to me, and hears my words …”: there is an exercise, a challenge. You cannot hear somebody’s words unless you come to them. You need to come to the Lord, I need to come to the Lord, individually, personally. We need to come to the Lord in our exercises, in our needs and in the challenges that we have. And what does the Lord do? He will speak, He has words for us. There are His words that have been recorded in Scripture for us, there is ministry that has been and is being given, the current speaking of divine Persons. “Every one that comes to me, and hears my words …”; may we hear His words, dear brethren, because they will help us. They will help me to be more in the company of Jesus, more ready and more willing to hear His words. It is a challenge that I feel for myself.

Then there is a further challenge “Every one that comes to me, and hears my words and does them …”. Do we do what the Lord has said to us, are we obedient to it? The man in John 9 was obedient. He did what he was asked to do and it was for his immense blessing. If he had refused, if he had been disobedient to the words of the Lord, think about how he would have been left, with mud on his eyes – you might say even worse than he was before. Dear brethren, let us hear the words of the Lord and let us do them. Let us be obedient. The kingdom is made up of obedient persons, subject persons who are prepared to listen to the words of Jesus and to recognise that He is our stability.

Then the Lord gives a picture, “I will shew you to whom he is like. He is like a man building a house”. The Lord makes it individual here, “a man building a house”, but I would like to apply this to our households, because if He is to be our stability individually then surely He is to be our stability in our households. You might not live in your own house, we all live in different circumstances, but we all have a responsibility to our households. We have a responsibility in that environment. What are we building in our households? I feel the edge of that because it is very easy to be idle in the Lord’s things in our households. What are we building? If we depend upon the Lord, and if we are prepared in our household settings to come to Him and hear His words, and to do them, that household becomes like this house that we read of here. It says that the man “dug and went deep”. Dear brethren, these things may not be easy, they require commitment, they require exercise on our part. I love the detail of Scripture; it does not just say that he dug, but that he “went deep”. There were things that had to be dug through. You dig down through the first layer, the leaf layer, then through the top soil, then through the subsoil, through all these layers, and what do you find? You find the rock. Paul refers to the foundation which is laid in 1 Corinthians, “which is Jesus Christ”, (chap.3:11); there is the foundation. If we are prepared to dig, that is a good exercise, but then are we prepared to go deep, to go down and to find that Rock, and to find that He is our stability, our stability personally, and our stability in our households?.

I would encourage every household to go deep. We have new households in Witney and here in Strood and many other localities. What a blessing they are, but let us be exercised in our households to dig and to go deep and to find the Rock that is Jesus Christ, and build on Him. There is a great blessing to be proved in it. It says, “but a great rain coming, the stream broke upon that house, and could not shake it, for it had been founded on the rock”. There is something very interesting about this verse; it says, “the stream broke upon that house”. You cannot expect our households to be immune from the enemy’s attacks, but what we can ensure is that our households are built on the rock. If they are built on the rock, they cannot be shaken. If the Lord is our stability, if we turn to Him and we commit our households to Him, there will be something that cannot be shaken.

Acts 11 suggests that the matter of stability applies also to our localities. Antioch was an interesting place, and it has been referred to as a model assembly. It was one of the first local assemblies and there are some things I would like to draw out of this. It says in verse 21, “And the Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord”. Now, I have to think about my locality, because that is where my first responsibility lies, and I have to ask myself, Is that the condition that I find there? Are there those there who believe, are there those who trust in the Lord Jesus, are there those who turn to Him? It says that they believed and “turned to the Lord”. In our localities, are we prepared to turn to the Lord, to turn to the Person who is to be the stability of our times. Will I encourage and work with my local brethren so that that might be the case? Or, far be the thought, am I looking to my own abilities in relation to matters in my locality? Let us turn to the Lord. Let us prove the sweetness of working together and turning collectively to the Lord, to enquire of Him.

And then it says in verse 23 as to Barnabas “who, having arrived and seeing the grace of God, rejoiced, and exhorted all with purpose of heart to abide with the Lord”. That is an exercise, as to whether we are prepared to abide with the Lord. Are we prepared to be patient and to wait for His word? To abide with Him suggests to me that we are peaceful and at rest in His company, but He is to have the pre-eminent place. I think often of the disciples in those early days when they said to the Lord, “where abidest thou?”, and He in His grace said, “Come and see”, John 1:38,39. Scripture does not tell us anything about the place to which they went; what it tells us is that “they abode with him that day”. The important thing was that they were abiding with Him. It did not matter where it was geographically, it did not matter where it was circumstantially; what mattered was that they abode with Him.

May we be helped and strengthened to abide with the Lord Jesus. We have been through a period, and still are in a period, of deep exercise and sorrow among us. There are brethren with whom we do not currently have links in fellowship and we feel that. But may we not go away. The Lord felt that; He said to His disciples at a time when it was hard, “Will ye also go away?”, John 6:67 May we be helped to abide with the Lord. May He be our stability, our gathering point, may He be the One to whom we are drawn in our localities, so that we might be sustained in His presence and know what it is to abide with Him. It is a place that is characterised by Him, and may we be helped to simply abide with Him.

There is a result in verse 24; it says, “and a large crowd of people were added to the Lord”. We may not feel that there is a large crowd being added numerically today, but that is not really what I want to draw out of this. What I want to draw from this is that there was something substantial that was added to the Lord. We think about that in relation to our localities. Is our locality serviceable to the Lord? I do not mean individuals in it, I mean the locality. Is it a locality to which the Lord makes Himself known? Do we prove His presence? Are we conscious when we gather for the Supper – and we have that before us if the Lord leaves us here until tomorrow morning – do we gather expecting the Lord to be present? Or do we gather as wondering if He will come? May there be, in our hearts, conditions of being set together according to the truth, so that we can expect His presence, because He would love to come. He would love to make Himself known, He would love to be there. May there be hearts to which the Lord can make Himself known and manifest His glory, the glory of the Son of God, and may we be liberated in those circumstances. May we be encouraged in this, that as to our localities there is something added to the Lord, something that He can use, something that He can take and make His own.

I want to turn back to Psalm 2 to draw attention to the final verse; “Blessed are all who have their trust in him”. There is a blessing in this. There is a line in a hymn:-

‘Simply trust Him, that is all’      Hymn 439

Dear brethren, that is my exercise, that we might simply be prepared to trust the Lord, trust Him for everything. Trust Him for the circumstances of the way, trust Him for the circumstances in which we are, trust Him for the circumstances in our localities and the conditions that we may have there, trust Him for those administrative things that we have to deal with. Are we prepared to do that and simply trust the Lord? That hymn says, ‘that is all’. May He be the stability of each of us; “he shall be the stability of thy times”. There is a poem in which the writer says,

‘I have Christ, what want I more’²

May that be the experience of us all, for His name’s sake.

Address at Strood

5 May 2018

A.J. McKay