THE ONLY LINE OF POWER AND SAFETY

^[p. 296] THE ONLY LINE OF POWER AND SAFETY

“Girt about with truth” is the first power of the panoply of God; and if the first be neglected or defective, there is no use in attempting to acquire or put on any of the others. Nay, the possession of the others without the first only helps one on in a wrong line. For instance, if I could have the shield of faith without truth, I should by my faith commend and support that which is untrue; and thus great mischief is done to the truth by devoted saints who have some faith with only a measure of truth. The truth is necessarily the first point. Since man has believed a lie, and is under penalty in consequence, the first and greatest acquirement must be the knowledge of the truth; and only in the maintenance of it is there safety, if the heart would be true to God. The law, demanding righteousness from man, came by Moses; but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. The truth has come by Him who is the truth. If we see that the fall of man was occasioned by a lie, and that the effect of it was to alienate man from God, as well as to bring in sin, which distanced God from man, the truth must be the most cherished possession to the renewed mind. Can I for a moment understand that man’s fall from God was occasioned by the acceptance of what was not true, and that thus he became so morally tainted and influenced by it that by nature he is at enmity with God, and not seek to know the truth, and to value it as it has been unfolded to me? Man has been ruined by Satan’s lie. The mercy of God is shown in communicating the truth. The exercise to the saint is to refuse the influence and working of the lie, and be subject simply to the truth. If a man has to go a long, unknown and dangerous voyage, and if after several days he finds that he has been led entirely wrong, that the right line has no connection at all with the one he has been sailing in; as soon as he is convinced of this, surely there will be a careful adhering to the right one, and a corresponding ^[p. 297] fear lest he should fall again into the wrong one. Surely his first and greatest inquiry continually would be whether he was steering right, for it would matter little how things fared with him in the present if sure to reach the desired haven. To tell such a one that the right line was the first and main thing would be superfluous. He has suffered enough already from going the wrong way, and hence nothing now is paramount with him but the right one. If the converted one were subject to no evil influence, it is plain that truth, the mind of God as it has been revealed, would be altogether paramount. But the real point of resistance is here, for the flesh can accede to a modification of the truth. Do anything, introduce anything, make alterations without end, and reformation in every particular; but if you insist on the truth and its scope at any given time, you expose yourself to the most determined opposition; for in doing so you entirely neutralise the power of Satan and the working of the flesh. When the truth revealed is insisted on, God gets His place; and hence this is the point of safety, for He is Himself committed to it, and He stands by the one who maintains it. The more the truth was revealed, the more Satan, and man as his vessel, were set aside by it, and God was upheld. Faith marked the path of truth. Abel suffered on account of his faith, but he was in the place of safety. Enoch was apart from everything here, but he walked with God in perfect safety. Noah was safe in the ark, but he had to leave everything for it. Abraham by faith, led of God, reaches the land — the true place — the place of safety; but he did not keep it when there was a famine there, he went down into Egypt. It is useless for anyone to say that he could not keep it. The true place was the land, though the famine was there, and the defection which led him to Egypt entailed sorrows that were never removed.

Is it the truth with which I am girt? Is it the mind of God which rules me? or is it the famine, the pressure ^[p. 298] of circumstances? It is a serious question. Satan’s object always has been to compromise the truth, because the truth always connects the soul with God, and there is no means of adhering to it but by faith in Him. The great virtue of the truth is its aim or pinnacle, and where its virtue can only be fully known. The full energy of God’s Spirit must be at the point on which He is set, and it is against this that Satan is set, because he is the god of this world. If the promised land be the aim or pinnacle, it is against it he works. If to be a pilgrim when in the land is the great point, against that he is set, whether it is with a Lot or with a Jacob. When Jacob has returned to the land, and after his success with regard to his brother, and after receiving the name of Israel, Satan succeeds, and he is not a pilgrim; the great aim of the truth is lost. Jacob buys a field, and the only remedy for the distress and confusion which his declension from his true calling entailed was to “go up to Bethel” (Genesis 35: 1), the spot where the great unfoldings of God had been made to him; Genesis 28. I need not multiply examples; there is no instance of any saint that I know of, who has not been at some time or other subjected to an attempt from Satan to deprive him of the highest point of truth to which he had been called or has received. Why is there such an effort to deprive one of it, if there be not great gain in retaining it? Faith — the eye on God, commanding all the resources of God — keeps me in the truth, and as I am in it, I am master of the activities arrayed against it. If I can escape the enemy’s arrow by reaching a height, surely it is wisdom to go there, though I provoke his ire by seeking the security. The remnant who returned to the land from Babylon were stopped in building the temple (Ezra 4), but there was no blessing until it was resumed; Haggai 1:2. Their being in the land was not enough. The temple was now the highest point, and all blessing is stayed until they begin to build it, and then it is, “From this day will I bless you”. Peter and Barnabas had well nigh balked Paul, but through grace he was preserved; and he says, “To whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of the gospel might continue with you”.

The apostle in Colossians 2 dwells fully on this subject; he says, “I would that ye knew what great conflict I have for you, and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh; that their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge”. His great conflict for them was that they might reach the top — united together to Christ; and here only they could be safe. “This I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words”.

At such a height there is no place for man; the flesh, as a principle, is gone in the cross, and his status in baptism; Colossians 2: 12 - 14. He is complete in Christ, and is risen with Him to mortify every rising in himself against Christ, and to have his body expressive of Christ’s mind in everything. And where it is so, there is no opportunity for either rationalism or ritualism. If I am clear of that on which either of these would act, I cannot of course be acted on by them; I am perfectly safe, I am in Christ, entirely above and beyond the man that can be acted on. Practically, saints are too much satisfied with foundation truth, or with mere happiness, not seeing and not provoked to see that, as a builder is taken up with the top course, or that as the growth of a tree depends on its leading shoot, so must they maintain the highest truth to which they have been called; for if that is neglected or surrendered, there will be neither health nor growth. The building cannot be finished if any point but the top be the limit, nor the tree grow without its leader. Hence the apostle says, “Continue ^[p. 300] thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of”. The best bit is the first bit that you will surrender if faith wanes. In ascending a ladder, if you stop you surrender the top, and if there be no advance your energy flags; there is no fresh exertion of power, and there is weakness in everything. If you observe yourself and all the saints with whom you are acquainted, you will remark that it is the highest truth, and of course its practical effect, which is always surrendered first.

The excesses are abundant. The fact of the man Moses having gone away, and “we wot not what is become of him”, was Israel’s excuse for breaking the first and greatest of the commandments; Exodus 32. Samuel not having come is Saul’s excuse for forcing himself to be a priest; 1 Samuel 13: 12, 13. Many a true-hearted one in the present day has stopped short, like Jacob at Shalem. They have learned the true standing; they have tasted of the power of Christ, the new name; but losing sight of the aim of their calling, the goal of it, they have looked for something in the place where emphatically they were called to be pilgrims and strangers, and there is no progress, but great sorrow. The loss to souls is not so much that they have not reached in spiritual power the point where God has set them, but that the eye is not set on it, like the eye of the racer on the goal. They do not see the mark and lay aside every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset them, in order to reach it. It is not at the height, when reached, that the power of the Spirit of God begins, but when I am moving on in the line in which He moves, for He leads on according to the purpose of God. He presents nothing lower to me than the crown, which is really His own point; and the moment the eye of my soul is set on it in purpose of heart, He succours and invigorates me. From the moment the children of Israel began to “go up to the mountain, and bring wood” for the temple, their blessing began. “From this day will I bless you” is the happy ^[p. 301] known experience of every soul that has turned his eye to the height to which God has called him. As the double portion of the Spirit comes from the ascended One to the one whose eye rests on Him (see 2 Kings 2), so does the energy of the Spirit now meet and succour every one who, however reduced, looks up and acknowledges the aim of God’s purpose, like Daniel, who from a window in Babylon turned his eye to Jerusalem, though it was in ruins.

When the remnant returned from captivity, both in Ezra’s time and in Nehemiah’s, they celebrated the feast of tabernacles; they rose to the height of God’s thoughts about them. Timothy’s strength was in continuing in what he had learned and had been assured of; 2 Timothy 3. When the church is at its lowest point, the offer of Christ to every saint is the highest. “If any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me”. If we are not on the line where the power is, we cannot enjoy it; but the moment we enter on that line, that moment the power and favours are ours and known to us. Many are booked for the journey who do not travel on that line. The moment you have faith in God’s purpose you are in the power of the Spirit of God, and all the opposition has been surmounted. A ticket gives the right to travel; but many a one with this right does not accept the line for which he is booked, and commit himself simply to the Spirit of God to convey him to the terminus according to the will of God. The right to go, and really going, are two very different things. I am safely carried where I bid farewell to everything, and consign myself simply and wholly to the purpose of God, the height to which He has called me; and the same power which will carry me to the top is that which enables me to take the first step. But the first step must be with the purpose to reach the top, or you are the slothful man that will not roast what he took in hunting.