PERSONS MARKED BY CHANGE OF POSITION
What led me to these passages of Scripture was that each of these persons changed their position, and in doing so they became an object of interest to heaven, thus they came in for a divine disclosure. The Lord said to the disciples, “Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place and rest a little”. Mark 6: 31. There is a danger of the surroundings we are in, and the circumstances of life, limiting us from entering into the great wealth and provision of divine grace. The Lord said, “Come to me”, it meant a change of position; they had to move from where they were to come to Him, to enter into the wealth that was there to be enjoyed. So we find in these persons that they moved from the circumstances in which they were; I am not saying they were in wrong circumstances, but they turned; they opened their heart and put themselves in the way of a divine disclosure. I believe there is a need for that in these days. We sung in our hymn—
Come!—the Father’s house stands open
(Hymn 154)
no doubt the hymn writer had in mind that young man in the far country, oppressed with the famine, while there was the father’s house. He needed to change his circumstances, to make a move. The father’s house was ever open with its wealth and love, it was all there for him, and yet there he was in that far country enslaved in the circumstances that he had gone into in his own waywardness.
These persons of whom we have read were not in wrong circumstances. We may console ourselves that we are in right surroundings, yet there may be a need for us turning aside for a moment. The surroundings that we are in may tend to becloud our vision and hinder us from seeing the greatness and grandeur of what God may be doing today very near to us; we may be missing it through being engaged in the surroundings. More than once in the prophets God says. What do you see? It is a good question for us just now. What are we seeing? You may say, Well, we are seeing confusion, in what has come into the public surroundings of Christianity, in what bears the name of Christ but is far from Him. Is that all we see? Sometimes the Lord says to some to lift up their eyes again. God said to Abraham to lift up his eyes from the place where he was. Abraham was not in wrong circumstances but God told him to lift up his eyes from those circumstances to see something greater. God is looking for someone to be a confidant. He looked for that with Abraham. He is looking for someone to whom He can confide something of His precious thoughts. But it may be that we are too busy, too engrossed in our own surroundings. Think of Paul in prison; a man who had a vision into eternity; a man who was not hindered in the circumstances he was in, but had an insight into those holy courts above. He could write so freely about them to encourage the saints.
Here is Moses of whom it says, “Jehovah saw that he turned aside to see”. He sees if you are interested. He sees if you are a suitable confidant for the great disclosures of His love. God called to him, “Moses, Moses!” How beautiful that is. God calling his name twice. It is an interesting thing to look at in the Old Testament, persons whose names are called twice. God saw something in them that He would call attention to, and He calls them by name. He saw that Moses turned aside. How quickly He would enlist your interest! How He appreciates if someone turns aside, and is prepared to give Him a moment of their time, to give an ear, to open a heart, to hear the disclosures of His grace.
I have not in mind to go into the wealth and detail of what these persons saw, but Moses received some impression of God in His grace that dwelt with him for the rest of his life. I am sure it is something that every believer is to have some experience of; it is happy if you have it early in your life. Samuel had it, he is one of those God called twice. He had an experience as a young boy of God gaining his ear for he listened. God makes a good deal of Samuel; as a young man he had an early impression of God having an interest in him. He will give you that if you give Him your ear early in your life. I can assure you He will give you an impression of His grace and love that will be with you the rest of the journey.
I think of Moses going through this journey in the wilderness; he writes a psalm about it which begins, “Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations”, Ps 90: 1. He got an impression of God here on this mountain, and he went through a life, far more difficult than any of us could ever go through, in the wilderness with a complaining people, but he says, “thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations”, and “from eternity to eternity thou art God”, Ps 90: 2. He learnt that at the bush. May our younger brethren particularly have some impression of the kind of God that He is; He would enlist our interest. He would give us an impression of Himself as we give Him our ear, as we turn aside. You may say, the sheep had to be looked after; they were not even his own, he was there as a servant with a great deal of responsibility placed upon him; but it was no mistake he came to the mountain of God. In the midst of his work and the pressures of it, he came to a place where he could be in touch with God alone; that is where these impressions are gained, alone with God; he never lost the sense of it—“thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations”.
What exercises he faced (and we may be called on to pass through exercises), but there was a secret in his soul of a link with God, received because he turned aside to see this great sight. What a sight it was! God says, “I am come down to deliver them”. God in His grace came into the circumstances in which the people were, in Jesus, in the incarnation. It is very instructive to see the people who were affected by the incarnation; the shepherds who were outside the city saw it, and the wise men from the east. These persons turned aside to see the greatness and glory of how God had come down to deliver them, come down Himself. What a message it conveyed to Moses, light that remained in his soul in all its preciousness! God not only says, “I am come down to deliver them”, but also, “to bring them up out of that land unto a good and spacious land”. How often Moses must have fallen back on this impression. It is a very great rock to have an impression from God in your own soul that you can fall back on in troublous times. The people spoke of stoning Moses and of making another captain to lead them back to Egypt. I can think of Moses falling back on this word from God, ‘I will bring them up into a good and spacious land.’ Without this experience he could never have gone on, but in the light of this he went through to see the land with the tribes at the end of Deuteronomy. Moses saw there the completion of the promise, but it was enshrined in his affections all the years of that wilderness journey. I call attention to it to show God’s interest in persons who are prepared to turn aside and give time to hear the personal word of God. God spoke in all His grace of His love to strengthen His servant for the great place he was to fill in the ways of God. He strengthened him with this precious impression because He saw that he turned aside.
In Revelation it says John turned. He was in very limited circumstances; he might well have been lying on his bed complaining, wondering and thinking, Is this what it has all come to? He was there a prisoner on the isle of Patmos, but it says, “I became in the Spirit on the Lord’s day”. There is something of John’s own action in that. Had he been complaining about the circumstances and chafing under them, he would never have become in the Spirit; but he is there with some sense of the treasure in his heart of the love of Jesus that he knew so well, so he says, “I became in the Spirit on the Lord’s day”. It would bring out the distinctiveness of that day. As you think of John a prisoner there, you may say. Is every day not the same in prison? It might well have been for others who were in prison, but the Lord’s day was different for John, he marked it off in his calendar. You say, What is the point John? There is no one else and you are here in such circumstances, what is the point? Well, it says that he became in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, he put himself in the way of what that day meant, and he came into something of the blessedness of it.
So it says, “And I turned back to see the voice which spoke with me”—he turned back. It means that he opened his heart to what the Lord was doing. His was a heart oppressed with sorrow, no doubt, but he turned back to see the voice. That voice must have had the appeal of the voice of Jesus! Think of the appeal in grace of that voice calling us, calling to us not only as sinners, but calling to us to turn back, to turn aside, to turn round. The voice is calling because He has something to say. Alas, how oft the call may go unheeded; we would feel that in our own circumstances. That would be like Laodicea where the Lord is knocking, calling with His voice, calling to open to Him. John is not like that, he turns back to see the voice and what he sees is a Person. He did not see the Person at first, he heard a voice, but he wanted to see the voice. What he sees is one like the Son of man, and what he comes into is the light of the ways of God through the whole dispensation.
John wrote his gospel after this, and he wrote it with this impression, that he found everything was in the hands of Christ. What events were to take place in this world; John saw them all, but he saw that all was in the hands of the Son of man. What a solace and stay for his soul to see the Son of man “girt about at the breasts with a golden girdle—his head and hair white like white wool, as snow”. He sees an impression of judgment that was what was to come in, but it is all in the hands of the Son of man. There is no fear in that. God has placed judgment where it will be executed in perfect fairness, perfect justice; judgment has been given into the hands of the Son of man. John could rest in that because he turned aside and made room for these divine disclosures.
I believe they are happening today, the disclosures have not ceased, they are going on. God in His grace and love would look for persons who are prepared to give an ear, that is the call in this book, he that has an ear let him hear. It is not an ear that is given to the gossip of this world, but an ear that is tuned. The ear gets dulled if it hears too much noise, and there is a great deal of noise abroad. We live in an age of great noise, and the ears are apt to get dulled with all the messages going abroad, the confusion that is in them, but it says, “He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies”. So He is still speaking and the call would be. Have you an ear? Is there an ear to hear the Lord’s voice? What a word to get in these circumstances that would overwhelm you, “Fear not”.
The One into whose hands the judgment has been committed, and who will execute it, says, “I am the first and the last, and the living one—and I became dead, and behold, I am living to the ages of ages, and have the keys of death and of hades”. In his links with Jesus here John gets an impression from the Man who is above, that is a stay for his soul, and enriches his experience of the Lord he knew so well. The One that John saw, into whose hands everything had been committed, says, “I became dead”. He became dead, it was His own action, but He went that way for a reason. It was not that death enslaved Him or came upon Him. He was only a young man of thirty-three and a half years. He laid down His life of Himself. What volume is in those words; the Lord of life and glory, the Creator of all, became dead; but He says, “I am living to the ages of ages”. Death has no claim upon Him. How beautiful are those words that we sometimes sing—
Death had on Thee no claim,
Thou sinless one! (Hymn 152)
He became dead but death could not hold Him, death had to bow. Peter speaks of it so beautifully, saying it was not possible that He could be held by its power. The way He took gave Him, may I say, the moral right to be the Judge of all. He went that way in His own movements of power and majesty, but death did not hold Him. The psalmist wrote about it many years before, “What ailed thee, thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou turnedst back?”, Ps 114: 5. Death could lay no claim on that holy One. He says, “I became dead, and behold, I am living to the ages of ages”, that is beyond time. He would show John something of what was coming in, but what a stay for his soul, that in it all there was One whom he knew who was alive to the ages of ages. What a secret for a man who turned aside! He turned as drawn to the voice that was calling him. Maybe He would call you in the night season; that is what He did with Samuel. He was a young boy, of course, and maybe there were a great deal of activity at other times. God is looking for an ear. He found it in John and what a treasure He is ready to give him. It says, “Write therefore what thou hast seen”.
How thankful we are that John has written what he has seen. He says, I “have the keys”, it is plural, “of death and of hades”. There is not a created power that is outside of His reach. The heights above or the depths below, He is in control of them all. What a comfort that a man who turned to have this disclosure has written it for our instruction for our guidance. So we are thankful for these persons. We have spoken of two of them but there are many, many more since, who have turned aside and have written down what they have experienced in their own souls, and left it for our guidance, comfort, and strengthening. It says, “Write therefore what thou hast seen”. It is very substantial, it was not a theory or something in his imagination, but “Write therefore what thou hast seen, and the things that are, and the things that are about to be after these”. The whole period is covered in the disclosure that John received because he turned to see the voice that spoke with him.
Peter puts what I have said perhaps in a simpler form for us to understand, it says where he was lodging and that he went up on the house to pray about the sixth hour. It means that he turned aside from the circumstances there and, through prayer, made room for a divine disclosure. One of the most important disclosures in history was given to this man because he turned aside to pray. It shows the importance of a very simple act. He did not know he was going to get this, nor did he go deliberately to get it, he just went to pray, and God saw that he had turned aside to pray. God takes advantage of the opportunity of Peter praying to give him a disclosure of something that was entirely new; He gives him an impression of the glory of what has been introduced in the assembly.
Peter, a godly Jew, had been accustomed to God’s dealings with the Jews, and he had light beyond that in many ways, but it is made good in his soul in this instance through his turning aside to pray. Indeed you see his Jewish instincts rising up, but what he saw was a great sheet “bound by the four corners and let down to the earth”, it came from heaven. Peter had been accustomed to things on the earth, and his ministry largely was to encourage persons who already had looked for an earthly inheritance, but now he was to encourage them as to their heavenly inheritance. The words of Scripture are very precise. Peter sees “a certain vessel descending, as a great sheet, bound by the four corners and let down to the earth”, in which there were all these things that, to Peter, a godly Jew, were untouchable, but now they were cleansed by God as redeemed by the blood. Peter was brought to see that the work of Jesus on the cross, in His blood being shed, met not only the sins of the Jews, but there was power in what was done to bring every soul, Jew or gentile, or whatever they may be, through confessing His name, into the glory of a new system. There were all kinds of creatures but it says, “What God has cleansed, do not thou make common”. What an opening of eye it was to Peter, that God was able, through the blood of Jesus, to reach out to men to touch these untouchables, to cleanse them and bring them into this great vessel, let down from heaven.
How beautifully Peter speaks of his experience, he says. Who was I to forbid God? His thoughts were changed radically, dramatically because he went up to pray. What a change took place in his outlook; instead of looking at things through Jewish eyes, he now looks at things through assembly eyes; he sees that God is bringing in from the nations those who have put their faith and trust in Jesus. Through his experience with God he did not try to reason any more; he did not bring up these chapters in Leviticus that would have shut out these unclean creatures. A fresh divine impression helps us to turn, not to bring up past things to set aside what may be fresh and new; he could have done that well, but he says, Who was I to forbid God? I just leave with you the simplicity of it, regarding a man who went to pray, who comes into this great and precious disclosure.
In John 20 I refer to a woman. We have spoken of these persons of whom you may say, Well, these were gifted. But it did not come to them as gifted persons, it came to them as persons who, in the midst of a busy and difficult life, gave time to hear the voice of Christ. Here is a woman of whom it says, “she turned backward”, and again, “She, turning round”. In circumstances she could hardly understand, she tested things by her affection for Jesus. She says, “they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him”. She is saying, What will I do without Him? How interested heaven was in affections like that. You may say. Where was Peter? Where was John? They had more light, where were they? It says they had gone to their own homes. Here is a young woman with affection for Jesus, and the Lord makes use of the affection that is there; first of all He says, “Woman, why dost thou weep?” Dear friend, He sees your sorrows, He knows your tears. He knows the difficulties, and as we give room to our love for Jesus, He would say, “why dost thou weep?” How quickly He changes those tears as He would wipe them away. He listens to her you know. He has not an upbraiding word. He just says, Why do you weep? What grace! He had been into death. He had been three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, and here He is listening with an attentive ear to a distraught woman.
What these words must have meant to Him as she poured out her heart. She had said, “they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him”. How quick He is to tell her about it. It says, “Jesus says to her, Woman, why dost thou weep? Whom seekest thou?” Then He says to her, “Mary”. He is addressing individuals in all these passages I am speaking of, and again He is calling her by name, not twice, but He calls her by name—“Mary”, and “She, turning round, says to him in Hebrew, Rabboni, which means Teacher”. She is turning, opening her heart and mind to hear a message from Jesus. May I say, there has never been a message fall on human ears like it: “go to my brethren and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God”. What a message it was, given to a woman, alone, her heart rent with sorrow, face covered in tears, but who gave time and turned at the voice of Jesus. What an appeal in His voice, what an appeal in His love to cause us to turn, to hear what He has to say. How often we are ready to hear what men have to say about this or that, the world is full of voices and many sounds, but in the midst of it all, for those who are prepared to turn round, there is the voice of Jesus. There is a message of love, in each of these passages from which I have spoken, suited to the particular circumstances at the time. May we open our ears and our hearts to hear His voice, to know something of His love and the disclosures in grace that He is ready to give to an open ear and heart, for His Name’s sake.
BENDIGO
15th April 1995