DIVINE COUNSEL
[p. 137] DIVINE COUNSEL
Revelation 3: 18; Psalm 16: 7; Nehemiah 5: 6, 7; Proverbs 11: 14
What is in view in this service is counsel, as the Scriptures read would indicate, not counsel in the sense of the eternal counsel of God that is spoken of, the counsel of His will, but counsel in detail as specifically rendered. Without it, as the passage in Proverbs shows, the people fall; and so it is divinely provided first of all in Christ. He leads in everything for us, in every feature of administrative service. He learned as a Man here in lowly grace how to obtain counsel, according to what I read in Psalm 16 and in keeping with what is said in the prophet Isaiah: “The Lord Jehovah hath given me the tongue of the instructed, that I should know how to succour by a word him that is weary. He wakeneth morning by morning, He wakeneth mine ear to hear as the instructed”. These scriptures, dear brethren, are in no sense derogatory to the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ. On the contrary, they afford a feature of His glory that He could take up such a lowly attitude, an attitude suitable to the state into which He had come, becoming incarnate. It is part of His glory that He could speak in such a lowly way, saying even in this psalm, “Jehovah, Thou art the Lord: my goodness extendeth not to thee”. The worshipper of God marvels, and yet accepts with intelligence the suitability of these utterances of Christ by the Spirit; that is, uttered before He became incarnate. The Spirit of Christ uttered them anticipatively in the power of compression that belonged alone to Him as being infinitely great as the scripture attests. God Himself become Man here. He could reduce Himself, so to speak, within such a compass. So this would [p. 138] teach us humility and dependence, so that He understands as Man on high now, God over all, too, as He is said to be, and as blessed for ever; but as on high He has gone through these experiences on earth and actually received counsel. He would bless Jehovah who gave Him counsel. His reins also, He tells us in the scripture, instruct Him in the night seasons.
What food, dear brethren, is furnished for our souls, as in the Spirit of Christ we are lowly, as He speaks of Himself, offering Himself as a bondman for us: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am meek and lowly in heart”. What food is furnished for us in His words, receiving counsel from God as a Man here and saying, “My reins also instruct me in the night seasons”. What seasons they were of wakefulness! We are told that as in Jerusalem for the last time, entering in with tears, for as it came to His view He wept over it, not for Himself for the sorrow He was about to endure: indeed He told the daughters of Jerusalem to weep not for Him, but He wept over Jerusalem. We are told that He, as having come in for the last time, for He was making His exit from Jerusalem through death, that He taught daily in the temple and in the nights He went to the mount of Olives. What nights He spent there, dear brethren! They are only, as it were, for our contemplation; they are not recorded save indeed as we get hints in the Psalms. “In the nights my reins instruct me”, means the inward movements, the holy movements of Christ. As the different offerings were offered up, they are all typical of this, inwardly perfect, inwardly delightful to God; all went up as a sweet savour, those inward organs moving instructed Him. The suggestion for us is in our night seasons. No time in the life of faith is ever supposed to be wasted. The rest of our time is always precious. We are provided with opportunities. We are to learn that the nights are to be spent in this way. I speak [p. 139] of it now as turning to the psalm; I speak of it now in regard of the Lord’s own experience, as on high tonight, that He understands our circumstances; He understands perfectly. He has reached the place He is in through sufferings. He was tempted in all points such as we are, sin apart, so that He is able to succour those that are tempted. He knows the counsel we need and He will give it to us.
The liberality of His counsel is seen in the first scripture I read, the wide bearing it has. The letter is addressed to Laodicea, the last of the seven assemblies written to by our Lord. He immediately says to her, “Thou art neither cold nor hot”. He knew exactly the state of things. It refers to christendom, not in its Babylonish, gross Babylonish character, but in that phase of it that would still own the lordship of Christ. It may be what would be called formalists, persons who hold to the Bible; for all of whom we give thanks, for all who love our Lord Jesus. He is speaking to such. He is not speaking to Philadelphia, which represents the living feature of the public body. That is a feature we can appreciate. Thank God there is such a feature, not only that there has been or will be, but there is. There is nothing I am more certain of than that, that a Philadelphia exists today. But Laodicea exists; a parallel is still seen, not scepticism, not moralism, not Rome, but that feature that would recognise the Bible and the authority of Christ formally, really, too, with some of them. He says, “I am about to spue thee out of my mouth” not because she was utterly cold or utterly hot, but lukewarm. It may be there is some lukewarm Christian here in this audience: this is a solemn word for you. The Lord does not like lukewarmness; He does not like modernism, higher criticism, as it is called; nor does He like Babylon the great with all her ramifications. He does not like lukewarm christians with the Bible [p. 140] under their arm, and all that goes with the public profession of Christ. There is lukewarmness of heart. He does not like that; it is very tasteless to the Lord, and if there were nothing more than that on the earth for Him He would soon spue it out. But there is more; thank God there is more than that. There are christians whose hearts burn within them when they hear of Jesus, when they hear expositions of Scripture. That is not distasteful to the Lord. He is pleased to dwell with them. The Lord is more in this meeting that anyone here, or all of us together. He is pleased with us; I humbly say it is so. Through grace it is so, that we have sufficient interest in Him and His things, to turn aside to listen to something about Christ. But He is speaking now to the general profession in that particular assembly of Laodicea, and He gives counsel.
It may be that there is an unconverted person here tonight. The Lord is ready to give you counsel. You may have many a time spurned it from the brethren, turned away your shoulder from your parents when they would give you counsel; but now you are here tonight and the Lord would say, ‘I would give you counsel; you are in great need: come, to Me’. There is no other hope; there is no other resource. The Lord says, “I counsel thee to buy of me gold purified by fire”. You have not got anything now. The whole profession as viewed in its Laodicean phase is without gold, that is, what is of God. There is plenty of what is of man. ‘See this fine building’, says one; ‘See this wonderful architecture’, says another; ‘See the number of communicants’, says another; ‘See the missionaries abroad’, says another. That is all what man is doing and can do, not what God can do. It is what man is and what he can do. Oh, beloved, it is what God is and what is of God that is needed! What is said of christians is, “Of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who [p. 141] has been made to us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and holiness, and redemption”. Now that is objective, as we say. It is an objective presentation of fact, this great fact; but think of it, of God are we in Christ Jesus! We are christians. Whoever is holding that is a real christian from that point of view, “Of him are ye in Christ Jesus”. We are not of man; as many as accept Christ, we are told, to him God gives title to take the place of His children, those that believe on His name, “Who have been born, not of blood nor of flesh’s will nor of man’s will, but of God”. Man is entirely shut out in that sense. We are of God. Let us begin with that; it is an objective thought. However young the christian is, he is a babe in Christ. A babe in Christ gives him status before God, and before the brethren, too; he is of God and Christ is made unto him wisdom and righteousness and holiness and redemption. All is reckoned on Christ; it has to be understood and appropriated, and that is what the Lord is saying here; He is counselling you. He is God’s wisdom, but now He is counselling you. You need what is of God in a characteristic way. I see you walk down the street, if I follow your history week in week out, and (although you are a christian, as we speak), your whole outlook and walk and ways are like man’s ways. The Lord says that you need something that you have not got, and He counsels you to get it; and if you say, ‘I have not got sufficient means to get it’, the Lord says, ‘I am ready to sell it to you’. There is a state of soul like that, and the Lord says in His grace, ‘I am ready to sell what you need; come to Me and buy, and I counsel you to do it’. It is His last word to Laodicea. It is that phase of christendom I am speaking of.
Presently He is going to consider all as Babylon in regard of judgment; the whole system will go under one head, and the Lord is saying to some christian here tonight, ‘Do not you be judged with the world; your walk and ways are very like it now, and you are in grave and dire need of certain things, and I counsel you to come and buy of Me’. He has gold purified in the fire. That would be that what is needed for the christian is already tried. There is not a thing that any of us need that has not been well tried, well tested. It is not a question of trying now in Christianity; that has been well tried in the fire. It is all a question of what is of God, and the Lord says, ‘I have got that very commodity that you need’, tried in the fire, in His own precious death. How it was tested out and all made perfectly sure as He came out victoriously from the dead, for He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father! Then there are other things that I cannot dwell upon for want of time, raiment and eye-salve. We need these three things: “Gold purified by fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white garments, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness may not be made manifest; and eye-salve to anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see”. Now these are the proposals of Christ and they are most affecting to those of us who understand chapters 2 and 3 of this book. The last phase is addressed to you, and the Lord is saying to you, to all of us that need these things, I will sell these things to you. The point is they are available. We who understand the gospel know they have been given to us, that God furnishes in Christ everything to us; but He is now addressing a certain state; it may be here, I do not know; but the Lord says, Have these three things, anyway; you are in dire need of them, otherwise spuing will take place. He says that He is about to do it.
Well now, in the passage in the psalm, as I said, the believer has a pattern in Christ, for He is our Leader, our Pattern and our Model, as I was saying already. What a blessed thing it is, dear brethren,
[p. 143] to stand alongside of the Lord Jesus as He has been pleased to come down so low, to come down to where we are, infinitely perfect in Himself, tempted in everything as we are, having to do with a contrary scene as no one else had to do with it! How He speaks of Jehovah who gave Him counsel! How He received it! It would only be in a priestly way that one would touch the blessed Saviour of all in such a lowly compass as we see in the psalm, but the priest may do it. The oblation, the meat-offering, is particularly for the priest: it is in a sense the food of the priest. The psalm is full of it, as we stand beside our Saviour and Lord as He was here below, looking up and saying, “I will bless Jehovah who giveth me counsel; even in the nights my reins instruct me”. It is an isolated view of Christ; He is not in company with any here. His heart is towards “the saints that are on the earth, and to the excellent thou hast said, In them is all my delight”.
No one who stands alongside Jesus will fail to value the brethren, to clothe them with the very best clothes available in heaven, as the father said to the bondmen, “Bring out the best robe and clothe him in it”. That would be the attitude of the Lord. The saints were the excellent of the earth to Him. Think of Him finding His joy amongst them! He came in and went out amongst them. He said, “The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places”. Where were those pleasant places? Not in Solomon’s porch, for it was winter! Not in Simon’s house! No, not in any such places as these where He was met with severe opposition, but in Bethany, where love was! He went out to Bethany, we are told, at one time, and spent the night there. He came to Bethany six days before the passover, where Lazarus was, where Martha was, where Mary was. He is a Model for us here as to receiving counsel. Let no one assume that he does not need this; let no one be sufficiently legal [p. 144] to deprive himself of such food as this, of such an object for contemplation, so that we might learn with humility of mind and with the saints in view, with the inheritance of God in view, that He has furnished us even now. Let us be simple enough to turn to God for counsel, to turn to the Lord who knows exactly what we need, and He gives it and in the night seasons, in the wakeful hours my reins instruct me, the blessed Spirit operating in these automatic organs with which God has furnished us, as the Lord said to the woman of Sychar, “A fountain of water, springing up into eternal life”. We shall find instruction inwardly.
Well now, over against this, yet in keeping with it, I want to show from Nehemiah how difficulties amongst the brethren are met, and there are many. They are constant, one after another like waves on a troubled sea, nor may we expect to have it anything different if we are to be here in loyalty to Christ. How are we to meet them? Well, you say, There is the care meeting. We are not at that at the moment, that is Proverbs; but I am coming first to each of us who has these cares on our hearts, for a care meeting is nothing if those who attend it are not burdened. Now Nehemiah is one of the best examples of a brother occupied in the government of the house of God in type. He is a man as we have no doubt often noticed, who speaks a good deal about himself; we have to leave that. So it is with Paul, the Spirit of God makes Paul speak of himself, and Nehemiah speaks of himself, too, I do not compare him with Paul exactly, but anyway, he says here in the presence of a very great difficulty, “I consulted with myself”, you will all remember the verse I read in Nehemiah 5. He says, “I was very angry when I heard their cry and these words”. God did not question his anger, it was right; we ought to be, the Lord Himself was, we ought to be angry and [p. 145] sin not. Nehemiah was angry, and why was he angry? It was because one set of brethren was oppressing the other set of brethren. He loved the brethren; he had no predilections at all; he was for God in these matters. He stood alone according to this chapter, first of all. One set of brethren was oppressing another set of brethren; it often happens. It is not physical pressure, but in one sense this often happens.
Meetings are often divided into sets, and we have to watch that, that we do not cease to be brethren. One is our Master in heaven and we are all brethren. Let the brother of high degree, the wealthy brother, glory in his humiliation; let the poor brother glory in his elevation. The humiliation is spiritual; the elevation is spiritual. The humiliation brings me on to the spiritual platform of mutual feeling among the brethren; the elevation brings me out of my littleness, for my very poverty may be considered a virtue in my mind. Poverty is never a virtue, it has become a virtue in the world: now the poor are becoming the masters of the world and appear more cruel than those of high degree; they are ruthless in their cruelty. What is developing is apostasy in that sense. Mere poverty or low social degree is no virtue. Not indeed that God has exalted the rich, as the apostle says, “Consider your calling, brethren”, but he goes on to show that God is no respecter of persons; whether it be a royal personage, or a military personage, or a jailor, or a poor person who is nothing in this world, the gospel is for all, God is no respecter of persons.
So that the position here in Nehemiah is that he is angered on one occasion by the rich oppressing the poor, such oppression as was robbing the poor of their liberty. What a serious condition, one set of brethren oppressing another to the deprivation of their liberty, and, of course, robbing themselves of these very [p. 146] brethren, making them slaves! If our brethren are rendered slaves they have little or no power in the assembly; we are really destroying the assembly in that sense, and we are robbing God; we are depriving our brethren of their liberty. We have to stand fast, every one of us, in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. Anyone who deprives his brother of liberty is damaging the brother and robbing God. We have to contend with these things, and what I want to point out is that Nehemiah had no party friends. He had no party friends to turn to. The chief difficulty in meeting these exigencies that arise is in partisan appeal: persons who have some link in common take counsel with each other, secret counsel it may be, and party counsels, beloved brethren, in the very essence of them will crucify Christ. They never work God’s righteousness. The politics of the world are divided into partisanships, but what poverty that leads to! What moral poverty there is! There is nothing spiritual in it whatever. There is no such thing in the millennium as the king’s opposition; it is destructive of government according to God. The very idea of it is destructive of government according to God. But then, we have party government now, and God overrules it, but it is not God’s idea, nor should it be amongst the brethren; that is what I am speaking about.
Well, you say, if we do not come together, some of us, we shall be overwhelmed. Will we be? shall we be overwhelmed? The Lord says, “I will bless Jehovah who giveth me counsel”. Nehemiah says, “I consulted with myself”. Now, you say, What good is that? Well, this really alludes to the reins of the man. It alludes to his inward spiritual power, the power of thought that he had, the power of weighing things. That is what is meant. If we have difficulties let us try this instead of taking counsel with some brother or brothers who think as we do.
[p. 147] It is destructive of the assembly; the very idea is destructive of the assembly. In fact, anything that takes you out of the ground of the assembly is destructive of it. So we may reach the desired end, but if we do it will not stand. Nehemiah says, “I consulted with myself”, as much as to say, ‘I have no partisans; I have no party in Jerusalem — like many of the modern rulers’. God had one man to seek the welfare of the children of Israel. If you get a man like that you have something. Something will come about for God whatever numbers you have against him. God will work through him, and that is what happened here. So he says, as you will observe, “I consulted with myself; and I remonstrated with the nobles and the rulers, and said to them, Ye exact usury, every one of his brother! And I set a great assembly against them”. That is what he did. What power he must have had — moral power! Where did it come from? It came from God. He does not tell us that here. He shows the effect of that. He says, ‘I will renounce all party feeling; I abominate it’: “I consulted with myself”. The point is, he took counsel with himself and the result of it. The Lord says to the apostles, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations”. Think of the order He gave twelve men; there were eleven there actually, for they were already decimated. The breach is healed in resurrection, as we learn in the Acts, but He said to these eleven men, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations”. What did He mean by that? He meant that every one of these men had moral power derived from the counsel of God — eleven men! What will they not do? The Lord says that they are to make disciples of all nations. It is a question of moral power springing from a man that takes counsel with himself, his inwards are right, as in Romans 7; otherwise any inward counsel is confused, mixed up with all sorts of [p. 148] motives and thoughts; that is, it is difficult to disentangle the right motives unless we go through Romans 7: “I myself with the mind serve God’s law”. Anyone that does that is clear of all inward darkening influence and he can take counsel with himself. Thank God, we can take counsel with the Lord, too; we can pray. The effect here is seen; he says, “I set a great assembly against them”. He did that. What power he had! Is it not an incentive to avoid all party counsel? Even if it must be met, let it be met on the ground of the assembly; it may be two of you, or two of us, or twenty of us, or fifty of us; the Lord will be with us, but the Lord will never support a party.
So I come to Proverbs: “Where no advice is, the people fall”. You will understand that I am aiming at counsel, counsel as it is divinely furnished for the people of God. You will see in Proverbs 11 which I read, “Where no advice is the people fall; but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety”. It is not final. In regard of our meetings for care, it is representative; we cannot be sure, until we reach the assembly, of finality according to God in these matters. The solution of all matters that arise in the history of the assembly is in the assembly itself. The Lord has the greatest concern that we should never give up the thought of the assembly. He says, “My assembly”. If two of you pray, much will happen. “If two of you shall agree on the earth concerning any matter, whatsoever it may be that they shall ask, it shall come to them”; that is, two of the assembly. See what happened in Nehemiah’s day! The result was reached; finality was reached. The nobles submitted and the brethren were delivered from bondage, a great result!
So here, if there is no counsel the people fall. We do not want the people to fall. Many have, and why have they fallen? Party counsel! Every sorrowful [p. 149] deviation that has happened has been the outcome of party movement, certain ones together against others, and against the truth, too. The people fall where there is no counsel, and the passage means counsel according to God: “But in the multitude of counsellors there is safety”, as when we come together in our care meetings. The Lord loves those meetings. It is a pleasure to be in them; one has privileges in that way. It is a real pleasure to be in them, and the chief pleasure is that we are in the sense that the Lord has pleasure in them and He loves them. But it is a question of safety. Safety is a great matter. In the assembly it is one of the greatest matters. That is, there is no move or action taken that might endanger the liberty of the saints lest they should fall. Even a weak brother has to be considered: “Destroy not him with thy meat for whom Christ has died”. The greatest delicacy and care have to be employed, and it is in the multitude of counsellors, that is, counsellors according to God, men of wisdom. Surely we are to be children of wisdom. Wisdom is justified of all her children, and I believe the meeting for care in any locality is just that, that wisdom is justified of all her children. Every bit of advice given, every proposal made, is wisely made, not made to serve any party interest or selfish motive, but for the good of all, so that the people should not fall.
Well, that was all I had to say, and I commend especially this matter: “In the multitude of counsellors there is safety”, and that the brethren might know, might have wisdom, each in his measure, for we are told that the very least esteemed in the assembly is supposed to be able to judge in secular matters. So everyone in the assembly is to be a child of wisdom. May God grant that it may be so.