THE WAY OUT OF CONFUSION
E.C.Burr
What Paul had been speaking about in this chapter relates immediately to order, as we would say, in the meeting. It was already customary in the day in which Paul was writing for the saints to come together with opportunity for one to speak after another as the Spirit moved one and another, a kind of meeting that we nowadays speak of as the meeting for prophetic ministry, and Paul was concerned as he wrote here to indicate to the saints the necessity of order in such occasions. It is perfectly clear from earlier chapters that there was quite extensive disorder among the saints in Corinth even as they came together for the meetings. You can find in chapters 10 and 11 the environment in which the Supper was taken and see that there were elements of disorder even there: certainly the way in which things proceeded would have appeared very disorderly to any of us, given the knowledge we have and the experience we have of the way in which the saints gather together in the meeting for the Lord's interests, for the service of God and for enquiry into the truth. No doubt there are parts of Christendom where this verse might well be read with that meaning in the present day, that believers who gather together, many of them quite earnest in regard to the gospel, might still necessarily be reminded that God is not a God of disorder but a God of order and of peace as in all the assemblies of the saints.
But I think that what Paul says in the verse that I read was not merely something directed to the actual state of things in the meeting in Corinth but, as he so often does, he brings out a statement that he regards as universally true. He brings it in to meet a certain practical condition, but he brings it in as expressing a truth which is already well formed in his mind - as people say about expressions sometimes, a truism - something that he knew to be true anywhere. Of course if we study Paul's epistles we can find that in many different places there are statements that clearly are an expression of the truth as known to Paul brought in for particular purposes but they would have been the truth anyway.
I therefore want to say something in regard to this, not in the sense of order in the meeting - very little needs to be said about that. There was a time when things could effectively have been said about order and behaviour in the meeting. One thing that I have remarked (and I do not say this as echoing any critical view of the saints in the past in this country) is the way disorder in the meeting has virtually disappeared. I refer for instance to times which are within my knowledge when you would find young people at the back of the room talking to each other during the meeting, misbehaving during the singing of hymns, young people, and perhaps older ones too, talking to each other instead of singing. I do not say these things critically; I remark on them as elements of disorder which thank God have disappeared, and that is a very good thing.
But I wanted to say something a little more widely as to God not being a God of disorder. It says "God is not a God of disorder but of peace". It will be readily understood by the brethren that all God's activities after the beginning of Genesis relate to His not being a God of disorder but to the way He has indicated out of confusion. The way out of confusion is really the opening up of the whole of Scripture once disorder and sin had come into the world. I think it is always of value to us to apprehend the way in which God has not only prescribed but has Himself demonstrated the way out of confusion. That is something for us all to cling to. Many of us find that there is confusion in our own lives - there is a way out of that confusion. Some find there is disorder and confusion in their families - there is a way out of confusion. Sometimes we find there is disorder even in practical experience in the assembly - there is a way out of confusion.
I just want to refer to the beginning of the way in which God has shown a way out of confusion, because I believe the way God operated in the beginning indicates the way out of confusion and the way by which that may be discovered at the present time. In speaking of this, and saying that God is not a God of disorder, is not to say that God may not sometimes allow disorder to arise in order that we may learn something through it and by it, and that above all we may learn something more of the activities of God Himself through what He has allowed. We do have to bear in mind that whatever happens God has allowed it if He did not arrange it. There are things that God arranges, there are things that He allows, and it is an aspect of the omnipotence of God that what He has not arranged He has allowed. He does not allow the interference of others in any matter, least of all in matters concerning His assembly, but He has allowed them to arise, because it is perfectly clear that God, being who He is, could prevent any matter arising if He did not intend something to be learned through it.
Now the beginning of Scripture brings out for us a scene of very great disorder. Genesis begins "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was waste and empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep". There you have confusion. I am not now going into the way in which that confusion had come in, but there was confusion. Things in the second verse of Genesis 1 are not as they were in the first verse: confusion had come in. It says immediately, "the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters"; but then God acts, and I think His first act is an indication to us of the way out of confusion. God says straightaway in a scene of disorder and confusion, "Let there be light". God does not immediately say, This is the way out of the disorder and the confusion - He has no man to speak to. He does not immediately work so as to rearrange an ordered scene. The first thing that God brings in to a scene of confusion is light. We will learn elsewhere in the Scriptures characteristics of light. One is that it makes everything manifest: "that which makes everything manifest is light", Eph 5: 13. The first thing that God brings in therefore, if a way out of confusion is to be arrived at, is light. If we are ever conscious of confusion, beloved, whether it is personal or family-wise, household-wise, in business or in the assembly, wherever it may be, the first thing that is needed to open up the way out of confusion is light. Let us therefore beloved, if we are conscious of confusion in any circumstance, ask God for light, and let us begin with light. Sometimes we begin by asking God for the ultimate solution but, as I hope I may be helped to show, He does not do everything at once. But the first thing that God brings in is light. Therefore let us seek light, let us learn to seek it. We know where light is; the light of God now is in Christ, the light is in Himself; "if we walk in the light as he is in the light", 1 John 1: 7. Therefore I suggest to the brethren that if there are any circumstances in which there is confusion the first thing to seek is light, not opinion or personality, or any of these things which so easily become the first thing to us, but light; and I reiterate, the characteristic of light is that it makes everything manifest.
Now many of us would recognise that easily in our ordinary circumstances. Let us take an illustration: we are here, right opposite the fire station. If there is a fire after dark they take the engines to the scene as quickly as they can and while they are getting the ladders out someone brings in light. In practically every fire after darkness you will find the engines there with searchlights on. Or something happens in the house where things are dark - it is necessary to speak about these things in relation to the dark - and the first thing you say is, Have you a light? Let me have a torch. If something goes wrong, or something is lost in the house, someone says, Would someone put the light on, then we could find it. These things are instinctive to us in our environments and in our circumstances, and what we could learn from practical experience we practise very little in matters that relate to what is spiritual. Many of us look for the way out of confusion with the light as it were still off, and we grope in the dark and seek this way and that way and are still in the dark. The first thing, beloved, that God brings in is light; therefore let us ask God for light. Let us ask God to illuminate things, let us ask Him to show us the character of things as they are. "That which makes everything manifest is light". Of course when the scene is lit up you may find it is not as you thought it was. You go into a dark room and feel your way around and try to find something and you knock against some piece of furniture or something like that. When you put the light on you say, O, I had forgotten the room was like that. Beloved, our spiritual situations are often like that. We stay in the dark and bump against this and against that, whereas the light would show us the way straight through and we need not bump into anything. The first thing that God brought in to show how He would bring things out of confusion was light. And I suggest to the brethren that the first stop out of confusion is light.
Now things progress. I am not going very far into Genesis (actually if I had the capacity for it I could go right through the Bible showing the way in which God has brought things out of confusion) but I have four particular things I want to speak about. The next thing we find is that confusion has come into a scene where everything was perfect and in order, that is in the garden where God put man. Light had come in; not only had light come in but the scene had been ordered. You could say in a homely expression that the disordered scene had been tidied up by God's hand in creation, everything was in perfect order. There we have the garden in which God had put man and the woman, and then the enemy, Satan, entered in and brought confusion into that blessed scene. Think of that! Think of the, one might almost say, impertinence of the enemy to seek to and to succeed in bringing confusion into that scene which God had seen as very good. He brought confusion in by sin. You can tell there was confusion; there was at least confusion of face because man could not face God. Man was in the garden and God came down in the cool of the day to speak to him, and man hid himself among the trees of the garden and he took fig-leaves and made aprons. Why? Because confusion was there, man in confusion of face did not have the capacity to stand before God. And what does God bring in to resolve the confusion that was there? In type He brings in the death of Christ. It says He made coats of skin and clothed them. We know well, we have been taught so often, it has been so often preached from, that the making of coats of skin involves the death of the animals in question, and the use of the skin in order that persons may be clothed. Beloved, once God has brought in light His way out of confusion is to take persons back to the death of Christ. He will bring in light and will then take you back to the death of Christ. The way out of confusion, beloved, still lies in the death of Christ. I doubt whether there is any way out of confusion that is not in measure related to the death of Christ. The way out of confusion for man was in type the death of Christ, not only sacrificially on account of sins and sin but providing the means by which man could be clothed and have the capacity to stand before God in the perfection of what suited God. We may wonder in our day about their being clothed with coats of skin, but they were what God made and they must have been perfect for their purpose because they came from God's hand. If there is confusion God will take us back to that day. In measure we come back to it at the Supper every Lord's day. What does it say to us about the death of Christ? One thing that we should be perfectly clear about is that the Supper is an occasion at which there is no confusion. All persons are there in the light of the death of Christ, but they are there in the fellowship of His death; there is no confusion at the Supper rightly, persons are there on the basis of the death of Christ and in the fellowship of His death, they are there in the light of the communion of His body and of His blood; there is no confusion at the Supper. You can tell that that is what Paul was working at in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11, that there would be no confusion at the Supper. One does this and another does that, one takes his meal first and another is hungry, the situation was confused. Paul says "it is not to eat the Lord's supper" (chap 11: 20), but he also says "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of the Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of the Christ?", chap 10: 16. The death of Christ and its present bearing on us, beloved, is the way out of confusion. It ends everything that I may be attached to personally that I may hold very dear; all that has gone in His death. At the Supper you are beyond personal relationships. Of course we are delighted to come with our families and children, those that in His great goodness God has brought through to the present time and whom we can sit down with at the Supper. How much we miss those who are absent! How much that speaks to us of confusion as well! But the Supper leads you out of the confusion which natural relationships so easily lead us into; it is one means of God bringing us back to Christ's death as the great resolver of confusion. We come by way of His death. Of course His death speaks not only of what He has done in providing a basis on which God can forgive sins and where we experience redemption through His blood, but it speaks also of the way in which in His death He has died to the whole order of things here, the world and worldliness, the world and its looseness and permissiveness, the world in all the different attractions that it has for young and for old. If you read the daily papers what you will find is not that people are being shocked by the sins of the young - they are shocked by that - but they are being shocked by the sins of the old as well. Let us not think that sin and failure is the prerogative of young people; it marks old people as well. But the death of Christ is the way in which God brings us out of all that moral confusion as we learn its bearing upon us, the death of Christ delivering us not merely from sins and their power but delivering us from the world and everything which characterises it in the present day. And, beloved, the more we cling to elements of things to which Christ has died, the more we shall be introducing elements of confusion into a sphere where we should not know anything about disorder but we should know the God of peace as in all the assemblies of the saints. Therefore let us go back and see if we have first sought light, and then let us see if we are viewing every confused situation in the light of the death of Christ. Let us look at it in the light of His death. Suppose you could actually go to Galatia. Paul says to them "Jesus Christ has been portrayed, crucified among you", chap 3: 1. Think of that! What difference would it make in a situation? I think there would be a humbling and confusion of face among many, but there would be great deliverance in coming back to the death of Christ and the way God had clothed persons in the light of it; not leading us to make light of sin or of failure, not leading us to make light of what is proper and the right way for persons to walk in this day of public breakdown and confusion, but leading us to assert more and more that as we gather together the only way out of confusion is that the death of Christ should have more and more practical effect in us, so that the things that are incompatible with that death and His present life have no longer place among us; they only introduce confusion.
The history in Genesis goes on and various things intervene in the short early part; much history, many years, even centuries are gone over very quickly, and then there is even worse confusion and God comes into the confusion again. There is confusion at the time of Noah. It seems to have some special relation to the sons of God seeing the daughters of men that they were fair. It is remarkable that that should be brought in; it seems almost that it is brought in as a major contributor to the confusion before the flood. Confusion could have been brought about in many other ways. It is a word to us as to the whole bearing of marriage among us, a great salutary word in that part of Genesis, that the sons of God beheld the daughters of men that they were fair. And it is clear that God was against the mixture. And, beloved, we have to be against that mixture. Mr Taylor spoke of mixed marriages as the bane of every assembly. He bracketed mixed marriages and the radio as the bane of every local assembly. The Lord gives us sensitivity about those things, but they seem to contribute to the confusion before the flood. And God comes into that confusion in two ways, and I will speak of them separately. God comes into that situation by way of salvation. What a blessed thing! No one else could have found a way out of the wickedness of the world, yet God finds a way out of it by salvation. He says to Noah, Build an ark for the saving of your house. The way out of confusion is by salvation; not just, beloved, salvation from our sins, and as I have said before, their penalty - "The soul that sinneth, it shall die", Ezek 18: 20 - not merely that Christ in His death has borne the judgment of God and that we may be free from the judgment of God against sin, but God has provided a way by which, you might even say, you may be carried out of confusion. As Noah built the ark there was a sphere of salvation. That sphere corresponds to what is now to be found in the assembly, a sphere of salvation. Think of the conflict which beloved Mr Taylor had over that element of his ministry that the assembly was the sphere of salvation. Beloved, it is a sphere of salvation and the way out of confusion; that is, the assembly is the way out of confusion in the present day, and persons will find themselves out of confusion to the extent that they value the assembly. There is very little profit, very little indication of desire to be out of confusion, if we are not finding that the assembly has the principal place in our minds as to things down here. It seems necessary constantly to remind ourselves that there is here on earth that which is in the light of the assembly of God and that that is our sphere of salvation. I venture to remind the beloved brethren that nothing should have priority over our being in the assembly. It is sad to see how readily other things come in and are allowed to have priority over being in the assembly. I do not speak of sickness (I do not need to qualify what I am saying because there are things that sober people do not think) but if we want to experience constantly the way out of confusion we shall indicate that by finding our place and activities in relation to the assembly. I reiterate that nothing should have priority over that. I do not say these things here just because I am in New York; I have said these things at home and I go on saying them, that there are not things which have higher priority than being in the assembly. There comes a time when one has put away the things of a child. A lot of things belong to us when we are children, when we are young, as we grow up and go through the prescribed time of education and then we are finished with them. The things of a child are finished with and you become a man or you become a woman and you become it such as you are, and we do not need to spend the rest of our time acquiring further qualifications and pursuing further interests. The way out of confusion is not by further acquirements of knowledge; it is to find your life in the sphere of salvation which is the assembly. Therefore let us find our life there. God gave Noah a way out of confusion. There was confusion everywhere, all around him, and God says to Noah, I will give you a way out of confusion - build an ark for the saving of your house. And Noah built it. He took the wood and built the ark and then God acted and the ark was borne up upon the waters and Noah was in the sphere of salvation. I believe there was no confusion in the ark, just as He is a God of peace as in all the assemblies of the saints. Therefore, the way out of confusion for us is to value the sphere of salvation that God has provided for us. Value it, build to it, work to it, add your energies to it, bring peace into it, dispose yourself towards peace in the assembly, not by saying, That does not matter, and we can leave that, and that kind of thing (because I shall come on to that) but have peace in that sphere of salvation. It is the way out of confusion in the present day to find your life in the assembly of God as it is available to you.
The fourth thing I want to say is that, parallel with salvation, God's way out of confusion was by judgment. The way out of confusion was by light, and it was in relation to the death of Christ, and it was by salvation, but ultimately in regard to the disordered scene God's way out of confusion was by judgment. Let us not forget, beloved, that ultimately every confused situation is resolved by judgment. God came in in the power of His own omnipotence in judgment and brought in the great flood to cover the earth. The windows of heaven were opened and all the fountains were broken up and the water prevailed on the earth, and everything in which was the breath of life died. That was God's judgment then and it portrays to us God's judgment against sin and evil. I remember it being said that the weight of water on the earth in the flood reminds us of the weight of judgment, the weight of sin that Jesus bore. Think of that. That judgment has been borne, but God still has judgment as a way out of confusion, and ultimately every situation that is confused is resolved by judgment. God has established down here in the assembly an order of things to which He has for the moment committed judgment administratively. He has not committed judgment as to heaven and hell, and as to life and death, to the assembly; what He has committed to the assembly is administrative judgment that bears on the present course of things. Just as we find in Genesis 8 and 9 that the way out of confusion was by salvation, we find also that it was by judgment; the two things went together, and if some came into the gain of salvation others perished because of judgment. The great thing in these days is to remember that while we desire that none may perish - God desires that none should perish but that all should come to the knowledge of the truth - there is administrative judgment and it provides the way out of confusion. Ultimately that is what is needed.
I do not go further than that in Genesis because once persons had come to this, that there was a sphere of salvation and that alongside it was judgment, what do you get? You get the earth cleansed and fragrance for God, nothing untoward in the earth at all; at the end of Genesis 8, after the flood receded and Noah was on the earth again, you really get the second verse of Genesis 1, "the earth was waste and empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep", put in order. After the flood when Noah came out on to the dry earth you find that there is not darkness on the face of the deep, there is light: things are not waste and empty, there is something going up to God, there are burntofferings and fragrance: "Jehovah smelled...". What did He smell? An odour of rest. The scene that was waste and empty and with darkness on its face is now put in order, confusion is gone. I do not go further than that because I know that quickly, through weakness of man in responsibility, confusion came back again, but immediately after the flood you have the scene in the second verse of Genesis put right and the confusion taken away. God smelled an odour of rest and the world was in order and the confusion gone, and in a scene that was waste and empty there is something for God that was specially fragrant to Him and reminds Him of Christ in a way that nothing else does. Nowhere else, I think, is the odour of rest - He smelt an odour of rest. God finds that the confusion is gone. But it had been arrived at, beloved, by this means, by the introduction of light, and by the pursuance of things in relation to the death of Christ, and by the bringing to light a sphere of salvation, but ultimately by judgment.
God did not give Noah an ark to live in for the rest of his life; He did not say to Noah, Now, Noah, the world is very confused: you go and build a house somewhere in such and such a place and you live in that with all the confusion outside. The salvation and the judgment were part and parcel of the same operation. Beloved, let us not try to separate them, let us not think that we can have a sphere of salvation if we will not have judgment. We shall soon lose the whole sense of salvation if we lose the sense of judgment. And ultimately God resolved confusion in the earth by judgment. To those who listened to Him He gave salvation. There is a sphere of salvation too today, a sphere known to us. We have to be careful because people listen to what we say. We speak of experience in the assembly of God but in order to protect things against those who try to say, You mean such and such when you do not, we say that we walk in the light of the assembly of God. We walk in the light of that sphere of salvation and we know that sphere even if the whole of it is not available to us, and thank God that we know the blessedness of it. But alongside it, and in a sense what preserves it, is that there is judgment. I repeat this, that ultimately what resolves every confused situation is judgment. God, as I say, has committed to the assembly administrative judgment. It is only by judgment - and assembly judgment is a clear thing - that situations ultimately are clarified and confusion removed. There should never be doubt whether this is a judgment or not: that only adds to confusion; but God has left in that sphere of salvation a means available to it of removing confusion. As I say, the result of God’s activities by the incoming of light, and by what speaks of the death of Christ, and the sphere of salvation and the operation of judgment, was that He had a scene, you could almost say, put back in order, if I might just use that expression, but really it was a renewed scene. "The earth was waste and empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep" but at the end of Genesis 8 that situation is adjusted and all confusion gone and there is just a man and his house for God, all that God had in the scene. But, beloved, it was enough because God smelled an odour of rest.
Paul says explicitly that "God is not a God of disorder but of peace, as in all the assemblies of the saints". And I believe, beloved, that "in all the assemblies of the saints", if we will only grasp for it, there is light, there is the knowledge of the value and efficacy of the death of Christ in its fullest aspect and bearing, there is salvation and there is judgment. Where these things are known we shall find that confusion has been removed and we shall know the God of peace in all the assemblies of the saints. May the Lord help us to think about these things for our profit for His Name's sake.
BROOKLYN NY
8 April 1978