Regulation By The Truth
REGULATION BY THE TRUTH
Matthew 16: 15- 23; 17: 1-5, 24- 27; 18: 21, 22
I was thinking of the need there is with us all of allowing divine thoughts as we apprehend them, and divine things as we have part in them, to regulate our minds and outlook, so that we take them on and are really affected by them. While we enjoy much in the way of light and are often given, in some measure at least, in the Sprit’s power to touch the greatest privileges, yet I think we must recognise that we soon lose the sense and power of what it is we have part in. So that often we find ourselves exposed as moving subsequently on a level that is inconsistent with what really belongs to us. That, I think, is particularly set out in Peter in these passages, Peter being, as we know, especially in Matthew’s gospel, a sample man.
In the passage in chapter 16 he comes into view as one to whom the Father had given light as to Christ. There was no mistake about it; there was divine light in Peter’s soul as to Christ, so that, whereas others were saying that Jesus was John the baptist, or Elias, or Jeremias, or one of the prophets, Peter says, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”. The Lord immediately tells him that he is blessed: “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona”. While in one sense no doubt this was special to Peter, yet I think we can take it up, that we are sovereignly blessed because we have light in our souls as to Christ. God has given it to us. He has wrought with us. Those round about us, many people we have to come in contact with day by day, have no light as to Christ, no appreciation of Him and, in many cases, no concern as to it, but we have light as to Christ and appreciation of Christ, and are coming to understand more and more that we are bound up with Christ and that grace has given us the greatest conceivable portion in blessing with Christ. All this is real to us and therefore, we can say humbly but thankfully that we are blessed. The Lord says, “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona”, not calling him by his spiritual name Peter, but calling him by what he was as a man amongst men. In contrast to many others he was blessed in having this light in his soul. And further, the Lord says: “I also, I say unto thee”. The Father had given Peter light as to Christ, and now the Lord was going to give Peter light as to himself, as to Peter, and as to the assembly. He was to have the true thought about himself. “I also, I say unto thee that thou art Peter”. God has a living structure here upon earth in which He is served, and Peter himself was an indispensable part of it, an integral part of it. He was Peter, a stone.
This is well known to us, but it is very precious that Jesus is the Christ. There is only one Christ. The Christ eclipses and displaces every other man. Jesus is the Christ, the One who is the centre of God’s thoughts. How great they are! The assembly immediately comes into view as given to Christ to be with Him, suitable to Him, of His own order, to be with Him eternally. Not only is He the Christ, the centre of God’s thoughts, but He is the Son of the living God, involving a system of living affections of which Christ is the blessed Object. Christ is the Object of the affections of the living God and we are bound up with Him. All that is most blessed.
Then the Lord immediately enjoins on the disciples that they should say to no man that He was the Christ, a remarkable thing. The Lord never allowed Himself to be announced as the Christ while He was here. He did on one occasion, to the woman at Sychar’s well, tell her that He was the Christ, but He never allowed Himself to be preached publicly as the Christ while He was here. That had to wait for His glorification at the right hand of God. I think that He did not allow it before He had died lest men should get the idea that He had come in to make something of the first man. Everything that God is bringing in for His pleasure, to which we are called, lies the other side of death, and can only be reached by way of death. The children of Israel could only go into the land promised to them by God through the Jordan. There is no way of entering into divine things, which are spiritual and heavenly, save by way of death. That we all accept, I suppose, but we are slow in really and heartily accepting it. It has to be made good in us, and so it immediately says, “From that time Jesus began to show to his disciples that he must go away to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised”. The testimony of the Christ involved the eclipsing and displacing of every other man, the first man and his world, and that is a testimony that flesh and nature resent. So the Lord, recognising that fully, said He must go away to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised. On the third day He would bring in the basis in resurrection on which all God’s thoughts could be made good.
Peter immediately speaks. He is not governed by the light, the light God has given him in his soul and the instruction the Lord has given him. All that for the moment is entirely surrendered, and he descends to natural thoughts; “Peter taking him to him began to rebuke him, saying, God be favourable to thee, Lord; this shall in no wise be unto thee”. Now the Lord deals with it very drastically. “Turning round”, it says, “he said to Peter, Get away behind me, Satan”. A most solemn word, showing how we may become usable by Satan if our thoughts and outlook are not governed by the truth that we have received and in which we move. “Get away behind me, Satan”, He says, “thou art an offence to me, for thy mind is not on the things that are of God, but on the things that are of men”. That, I believe, is the whole secret, what our minds are on. We may enjoy things and enter into them in power while we are together and the Spirit is unhindered amongst us, but the point is whether we carry these things in our mind when the occasion is past, or descend to the level of natural thoughts and feelings; if we do there is a danger of our becoming a means for Satan to bring in something that is contrary to the truth.
In the next chapter the Lord takes Peter and James and John to a high mountain apart and is transfigured before them, and Moses and Elias appear to them talking with Him. Men were there in the scene of glory with Jesus. All this was for the instruction of Peter, James and John, but Peter unintelligently makes the suggestion of three tabernacles, for Christ one, and for Moses one, and one for Elias. That is immediately rebuked by the voice out of the cloud, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my delight: hear him”. We are to be reminded that the Christ, the Son of the living God, having come in, He must eclipse and displace every other. The light that shines in Christ is to give character now to Christianity, and God has brought in the thought of sonship for men in all the dignity and wonder of it. There was His beloved Son, and there were men with Him, talking with Him, and Peter, James and John were there on the mount, and so that was intended for Peter: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my delight: hear him”.
Now at the end of the chapter Peter is suddenly, it would seem, met by those who collected the tribute, and they say to him, “Does your teacher not pay the didrachmas?” He says, Yes, at once, without thinking, without weighing over what he had heard and seen on the mount. The thought of God’s beloved Son paying tribute! If you only think of it for a moment, how incongruous was the suggestion, and yet Peter at once says, Yes. Not that he had any intention of saying what was wrong, but he is on the level of the people around; he has lost sight of and not carried with him the impressions he received on the holy mountain shortly before. So he says, Yes, and the Lord in wonderful grace takes it up with him, really helping Peter to arrive at the truth, asking him a question as to those from whom the kings of the earth receive custom or tribute, from their own sons or from strangers. Peter says, “From strangers”, and the Lord says, “Then are the sons free”. Then He says “… for me and thee”. Wonderful grace on the part of the Lord Jesus, the recovering grace that would recover Peter to the sense of the wonderful position that he has! “For me and thee”; the Lord puts Himself first, of course—rightly so, for in all things He has the pre-eminence, but Peter is with Him. The Lord exercised His creatorial power to bring up what is needed, but all with a view to Peter hearing this word, “me and thee”. It is wonderful grace on the part of the Lord, that would adjust Peter and remind him again of what he had part in, as marked out for sonship by the grace of God.
Finally, there is this matter of forgiveness, and Peter asks a natural question, a question that might easily arise in any of our hearts, “How often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? until seven times?” He is allowing for a measure of forgiveness, but he is limiting it, and that raises the question, if we limit the extent to which the spirit of forgiveness is to come in, how much are we ourselves enjoying forgiveness? Ephesian saints enjoyed forgiveness. It says: “In whom” (in the Beloved) “we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of offences”. They were enjoying it; it was part of their possession, and God had given it “as God also in Christ has forgiven you”, Eph 4: 32. So we are to see to it that that which belongs to us colours our thoughts and outlook. Peter suggests a limitation, “until seven times”, and the Lord says, “I say not to thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven”. And then He speaks the parable which we well know, of the bondman to whom was owed one hundred pence and who himself was indebted to the extent of ten thousand talents, an enormous sum. The Lord mentions an immense sum in order to impress us with the immensity of what we have been forgiven, every one of us, so that we should see that our thoughts as to forgiveness are not limited to natural thoughts, but should take character by the way God has come out to us in Christ.
I have said all this as feeling the need of it myself. We have much light and much privilege, and we are given entrance into things in the power of the Spirit when together, but do we carry the savour of these things with us in our spirits and hold them in our minds? The Lord’s word to Peter in the first passage was, “Thy mind is not on the things that are of God, but on the things that are of men”.
LONDON
7th March 1952
From Words of Grace and Comfort, 1952
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